Brightspace Learning Environment 

Accessibility – Compliance with WCAG 2.1 | Updated

As part of our ongoing commitment to design and develop against WC3 accessibility best practices, there are updates to our shared web components, such as fonts, buttons, menus, and input fields, to ensure they align with WCAG 2.1 standards. These changes include:

• Text color change from #56A5C to #494C4E for our standard font styles, which is WCAG Level AAA compliant.
• Resetting clients to "Normal" for their Org default size to ensure that default configurations have appropriate legibility. In addition, the configuration option for setting a font override at the Org level has been removed. Users can still change their personal font preferences using Account Settings and existing individual user overrides are retained.
• Changes to the color, borders, hover and focus styles of other web components such as buttons, menus and input fields to ensure they comply with WCAG 2.1 color contrast requirements for non-text components.

These changes will improve readability and provide better ability to meet contrast compliance with non-text elements. It is D2L’s intention to be an industry leader in inclusive design, and these changes improve support for individuals with alternative fine motor, cognition, and low vision needs. These compliance changes contain no changes to workflows; all changes are look and feel only.

Activity Feed – Pin multiple posts | Updated

Instructors can pin more than one post to the top of their Activity Feed. Previously, only one post could be pinned at a time. This allow instructors to highlight more than one important post at a time to ensure that students do not miss critical posts.

This feature implements PIE item D4635.

Figure: Multiple posts pinned to the top of the feed

Activity Feed – Support for courses with sections | Updated

Activity Feed posts can now be sent to specific sections in a course. Previously, posts and comments were available to all users in a course and could not be restricted based on section. If an instructor is enrolled in more than one section of a course, they can specify which sections can view the post. Instructors can also filter their course activity feed by a section, allowing them to focus on posts from a specific section.

This feature implements PIE item D3952.

Figure: Select which section(s) you want to view a post

Assignments – Edit category improvements | Updated

An Edit Categories option is now available in Assignments to allow users to edit all categories from one page. You can add, modify, delete, and sort categories, as well as manage unused categories. If a category with assignments is deleted, those assignments are added to the No Category area.

This feature implements PIE items D1858, and D1913.

Figure: Select Edit Categories from the Assignments page

Figure: Manage all categories from one page

Assignments - Eraser added to Annotations | Updated

An eraser has been added to the Annotations tool bar to allow evaluators to remove ink annotations made when evaluating assignment submissions.

Brightspace Pulse - Improvements to notifications | New

To ensure that learners receive more up-to-date information in Brightspace Pulse, they now receive push notifications for all updates. This removes the need to manually check for update notifications. When a learner receives an update notification, an update icon displays in the Notifications tab.

With this update, the Share icon ( on iOS and  Android) is removed from notifications in Brightspace Pulse, the capability to share notifications with other learners is no longer available. Previously, learners could share notifications by tapping the Share icon to share a notification via instant message, email, or social media.

This feature implements PIE item D4753.

Class Progress - Default indicator change | Updated

Class Progress has two Content tool indicator graphs: Content Visited and Content Completed. In this release, the default is switching from Content Visited to Content Completed to better reflect learner progress through the completion of Content activities. The change will apply to all users who utilize the default settings of Class Progress. Any users that have overridden any of their Class Progress indicators will not see a change. Users who want to have Content Completed appear can switch indicators using the Class Progress settings in their course.

Data Purge – Purge user contributed files | Updated

When using the Org Unit Purge option feature in the Data Purge tool, administrators now have an additional option to purge User Contributed Files. This change is being made to address a use case not covered through the other purge types. The new User Contributed Files option purges user contributed files but not any other user-contributed database information, including quiz attempts and grades. This leaves the database information in place that may be needed for reporting purposes.

Note: This option does not display the number of files that are being deleted or were deleted.

Email - Email Domain Standardization | New

All references to ucourses.com, desire2learn.com, and brightspace.com domains in the d2l.Tools.HelpDesk.FromEmail and d2l.Tools.Notifications.Email.FromAddress Email-related configuration variables are now updated to follow the implementation standard of [your organization name].brightspace.com. Standardizing the domain references in configuration variables will also aid in improving the troubleshooting process.

Navbar - Display user initials when there is no user profile image | New

If a user does not upload a user profile image in Brightspace Learning Environment, the navbar now displays the user's initials in the user-profile badge. This change occurs for all roles and displays in the Brightspace Learning Environment navbar and Activity Feed. Previously, if a profile image was not uploaded, a blank user image displayed.

Figure: A blank user image previously displayed in the navbar

Figure: User initials now display in the navbar

Quick Eval – Improvements to Quick Eval | Updated

To improve the Quick Eval experience, the following updates are now available:

• The Manage Discussions permission is no longer required to evaluate discussion topic submissions using Quick Eval
• The Back to Quick Eval button directs users to the Quick Eval tool at the course level or org level, depending on where you launched it from
• Different date formats are supported in the Submission Date column (PIE item D5432)

Quizzes - Early preview of Quiz Builder | Updated

This feature includes a preview of work flows related to reordering quiz questions using keyboard interaction in the Quiz Builder, which you can enable in test environments or production environments in sandbox or non-live courses.

Once this read-only preview feature is turned on at the course level, instructors can then opt in / opt out of the new experience. D2L does not recommend using this feature in live production courses in its preview form.Quiz Builder is expected to be ready for use in production environments as of the August 20.19.8 release.

Once turned on, you can preview the new Quiz Builder experience by clicking Add/Edit Questions on the quiz Properties tab. The updated Add/Edit Questions screen provides a preview of the option to reorder questions and move between sections using keyboard interaction in the new experience. The experience is accessible when using assistive technologies. A drag and drop experience is expected to be released in the August 20.19.8 release.

When you opt out of the Quiz builder experience, you are prompted to leave feedback on the new design.

Rubrics - UpdatedGradingExperience defaults to ON | Updated

The default state of the organization-level d2l.Tools.Rubrics.UpdatedGradingExperience configuration variable is now set to On. Administrators have the option to turn off the new grading experience by setting the d2l.Tools.Rubrics.UpdatedGradingExperience configuration variable to Off. Turning off the d2l.Tools.Rubrics.UpdatedGradingExperience configuration variable will turn off the new grading experience for the entire organization.

Surveys - Improvements to the learner experience | Updated

To improve the learner experience when taking a survey, the following updates are now available:

• The primary button when completing a Survey has been updated from Save Responses to read as Submit Survey. Learners will continue to be prompted to confirm their submission when they submit the survey

• Learners can still save survey answers manually. The Save button now reads as Save Responses

• A new Back to Questions button is displayed when attempting to submit a survey with unanswered questions

• While learners are taking an anonymous survey, an alert appears at the top of the survey indicating that the survey is anonymous and their user information will not be tied to their responses

This feature implements PIE items D4528, and D1023.

Widgets – Updates to Lang Terms for Updates Widget and My Courses Widget | Updated

There are changes to lang term values to increase the clarity of the fields in the Updates Widget, the My Courses Widget, and Assignments (displayed in Grades) to more clearly describe the capability of the feature.

In the Updates widget:

• Show the number of new assignment submissions is now Show the number of unread submission files
• New Assignment Submissions for {subject} is now New Assignment Submission Files for {subject}

In the My Courses Widget:

• Unread Assignment Submission is now Unread Assignment Submission File
• New Assignment Submissions is now New Assignment Submission Files
• Unread Assignment Submissions is now Unread Assignment Submission Files
• New Assignment Submissions is now New Assignment Submission Files
• Show the number of new assignment submissions is now Show the number of unread submission files
• {number} Unread Assignment Submission is now {number} Unread Assignment Submission Files. Note: This lang term cannot be changed by users.

In Assignments (displayed in Grades):

• New submission - View {subject}'s submissions in a new window is now Unread submission file - View {subject}'s submissions in a new window

Integrations

LTI Advantage - Assignments and Grades Services | New

LTI 1.3 updates Assignments and Grades Services (AGS), replacing the basic outcome service that continues to be used in LTI 1.1. AGS extends and improves the ability of LTI Advantage when interacting with Brightspace Learning Environment.

The permission to create or update associations for grade items to an LTI content item is changed from External Learning Tools > Manage External Learning Tool Links to Grades> Manage Items and Categories. This provides the ability for faculty members to create External Learning Tool links and Quicklinks from available External Learning Tool Providers and update grade associations without requiring the permission to manage ETLs.

LTI Advantage - Basic LTI Launch | New

Brightspace Leaning Environment is now updated to reflect LTI 1.3 update standards. A new workflow exists where the tool is registered through a new permission in Manage Extensibility, after which the tool can be deployed though a new user interface and permission accessed through External Learning Tools. Two new permissions exist for administrators to enable the changes with LTI 1.3 (Roles and Permissions > External Learning Tools > Manage LTI Advantage Tool Registrations, and Roles and Permissions > External Learning Tools > Manage LTI Advantage Tool Deployments). Instructors with permission to create links at the course level must now bind the link to an existing tool.

LTI Legacy and Advantage - Role Mapping and UI Update | New

A new IMS Configuration user interface is available from Org Tools (pre-existing) and Roles and Permissions(appears as a new button beside Create/Copy). The Context role type is now also sent, in addition to the Institutional role type during the LTI to ensure that the tool provider knows which roles the user has at launch.

D2L has run a script to automatically map previously-set Institution roles to Context roles. It is recommended that administrators review these roles to ensure all user cases are properly considered: