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February 2026

Assignments

Group assignments are now supported in Advanced Assessment, enabling instructors to collaboratively evaluate groups of learners in Brightspace using Co-Marking, Delegation, and Multi-Evaluator capabilities. This update leverages the existing Groups tool, allowing learners to submit work as a team and receive shared feedback and grades through Advanced Assessment.

The feature introduces the following key improvements:

  • Seamless group evaluation: instructors can allocate evaluators to groups rather than individuals.
  • Consistent experience: interface terminology and visuals have been updated to reflect group workflows:
    • References to Learners are replaced with Groups, such as Allocate Evaluators to Groups.
    • Evaluation and feedback panel text reflects group-based workflows.
  • Improved workflow integrity: confirmation prompts prevent accidental evaluator setting loss when switching between group and individual assignments.

To enable group assignments, instructors must first create groups in Course Admin > Groups. Then, when creating an assignment, they must select Group Assignment under Submission & Completion.

To trigger the Advanced Assessment workflow, select evaluators in the Evaluation & Feedback dropdown.  

With this release, the experience for creating group assignments is enhanced. This update streamlines the Brightspace group assignment workflow by consolidating functionality into the new assignment creation page.

Group assignments are now best supported in the new assignment creation page, which offers a modern workflow and access to upcoming enhancements.

A Group Assignments workflow dropdown now appears in the legacy assignment creation page, directing users to the new experience.

Once Group Assignments are created on the New Assignment Creation page, users are redirected to the Manage Groups page.

The legacy assignment creation page is scheduled for retirement in Brightspace version July 2027.

Brightspace now provides clearer and more consistent error messages when learners attempt to submit file assignments using unsupported file types. These improvements help learners understand which file types are allowed and make it easier to correct submission issues.

The updated messaging appears across assignment submission workflows and Activity Display, ensuring learners receive appropriate guidance based on the context of their submission.

Updated error messages for file submissions

When a learner attempts to upload a file with a restricted or unsupported file extension, Brightspace now displays more specific messages depending on the number of restricted file types configured for the assignment.

Assignment submission page

  • If fewer than seven file types are restricted, learners see a message listing the allowed file extensions, such as:
    Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with the following file extensions: PDF, DOCX, or TXT.
  • If seven or more file types are restricted, learners see a simplified message:
    Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with allowed file extensions.

Legacy content assignment submission page

  • If fewer than seven file types are restricted, learners see a message listing the allowed file extensions.
  • If seven or more file types are restricted, learners see a simplified message indicating that only allowed file extensions can be submitted.

For file assignments, learners can now also see the list of Allowed File Extensions. This list previously appeared only for File and Text assignments and is now available for File assignments as well.

In Activity Display, learners now receive clearer visual indicators when uploaded files are not allowed:

  • If a learner uploads files with unsupported extensions, Activity Display identifies which uploaded files are not allowed.
  • If a file has no extension or the file type cannot be detected, Activity Display notifies the learner that the file type is unsupported.
  • If five or more files with unsupported extensions are uploaded, Activity Display displays a consolidated message indicating that multiple files are not allowed.

When instructors set Allowable File Extensions to Custom File Types during assignment creation, Brightspace now requires at least one file extension to be entered before the assignment can be saved.

If the field is left blank, Brightspace displays a clear inline error message and prevents the assignment from being saved. This improvement helps instructors avoid invalid assignment configurations and reduces submission issues for learners.

Class Progress

The completion progress bars for the Content Completed and Content Visited charts now load asynchronously as instructors scroll down the Class Progress page. Progress details appear for each user as they come into view, allowing the page to continue loading smoothly regardless of the number of users or content objects being calculated.

Classlist

The Classlist tool now includes a new option that allows instructors to export Classlist details to a CSV file. The new Export button provides a quick way to download all users, or a selected subset of users, along with the same details that are visible in the Classlist view. This update makes it easier for instructors to use Classlist information for administrative or offline processes outside of Brightspace.

This release also includes improvements to the existing Print option in the Classlist. Printed Classlists now display additional information, including pronouns for users (when visible in the Classlist) and details about which course the printout originated from. These enhancements provide a more complete context when Classlists are printed for in-person workflows or record-keeping.

Previously, courses with a large number of users or content objects could experience page timeouts when viewing the Content Completed or Content Visited columns in Class Progress.

Grades

The Enter Grades page now offers improved horizontal navigation, making it easier to work with large gradebooks. Instead of relying on a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page, instructors can use navigation arrows on either side of the gradebook, along with a scroll bar at the bottom of the grid, to navigate across grade columns.

This update also improves how dropdown menus behave, preventing them from appearing underneath other fields such as user names.

Previously, horizontal navigation relied on a scroll bar at the bottom of the page, which was not always visible unless users scrolled down.  

Groups

With this release, user filters across multiple tools are updated to display Groups and Sections in separate dropdowns, improving navigation and scalability for courses with up to 1,000 groups per category.

Previously, the View By filter combined groups and sections into a single dropdown. In courses with many groups or sections, this resulted in long, difficult-to-navigate lists. 

Surveys

Most survey reports are now generated asynchronously, and instructors receive a notification when the reports are ready for download.

Both CSV and Excel options are generated asynchronously, while the HTML option continues to be generated synchronously.

This update ensures that survey report generation aligns with the existing asynchronous experience for quiz reports.

The following report types now generate asynchronously:

  • Summary Report
  • Individual Attempts

This feature enhances the reliability of survey reporting, particularly for large datasets that previously risked browser freezing or timeouts during generation and export.

Instructors are notified of completed reports via the Notifications icon, indicated by an orange dot on the top navigation bar.