March 2020 - 20/03/2020
The new Brightspace release is available from 20 March 2020 10:00
Enhancements
Announcements – Display author information
Instructors now have the option to display author information (name and timestamp) on new and edited announcements. The box Show Author Information is set to unchecked by default.
See the announcement manual for more information on this new enhancement.
Groups – Set exact time students can self-enroll
When setting up groups that allow students to self-enroll, instructors can now add an exact time when enrollment opens, and an exact time when self-enrollment expires. Previously, instructors could only set the date when enrollment opened or expired.
See the Groups manual for more information on creating Self Enrollment Groups.
Rubrics – Confirmation message for partially unevaluated rubric
To prevent publishing partially unevaluated rubrics, the publishing workflow in the new Rubrics grading experience now includes a confirmation message that warns Instructors when the rubric is not fully evaluated. Instructors have the option to continue publishing, or cancel. Warning messages appear when publishing a rubric for an individual student and when bulk publishing rubrics. Users attempting to publish an incomplete rubric evaluation must now click Publish to complete the workflow.
See the Rubrics manual for more information on using Rubrics.
Bug Fixes
The following reported issues have been resolved in the new Brightspace Release:
Groups - Timeouts could occur when enrolling users into groups for courses with large numbers of users and groups
When attempting to enroll users into groups, a timeout could occur for courses with large numbers of enrollments and large numbers of groups.
Release notes for LMS Coordinators / Support Staff
We have informed our tool suppliers of this new feature as well. No immediate negative impact was reported by them.
To align with IMS Global best practices, two new history fields that comply with the LTI 1.0, 1.1, and 1.3 specifications are now supported when copying courses with LTI links. The $Context.id.history and $ResourceLink.id.history custom parameter substitution variables are included in the newly copied courses, providing the historical resource link ids and context_id_history for LTI links that have been copied. Copied LTI links now have their own incremented Resource_Link_id value, along with the historical custom parameters, enabling tools to easily understand if a launch includes a copied link from the learning management system.
Previously, the historical custom parameters were not included and the Resource_Link_id value was not incremented when copying a course, which created issues when users tried to launch LTI links from a new course. As a workaround, after a course was copied, users had to delete all LTI links and create new ones. This feature resolves this ongoing known issue and eliminates the need to delete and add LTI links in copied courses. Going forward, LTI links in newly copied courses should work as expected as long as the tool follows this best practice.
Refer to LTI Copy Course Updates for more information about this feature.
In summary: You can now copy LTI links across courses, without the need to adjust/clean up the LTI links in the original course.