What’s New on Brightspace? (October 2019)

Posted by crawfobn on Tuesday, October 1, 2019 in Uncategorized.

Every month, Brightspace will release new features and updates. You can get a comprehensive view of the updates here, but this blog post will give you a quick overview of what’s new on Brightspace!

Assignments – Grades entered in Assignments and Grade Book are synchronized

When an instructor enters a grade for an assignment submission in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the submission in Assignments. Previously, grades entered in the Assignment tool were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for assignment submissions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Assignments tool. This change ensures data consistency between Assignments and Grade Book.

Discussions – Grades entered in Discussions and Grade book are synchronized

When an instructor enters a grade for a discussion in the standard or spreadsheet view of Grade Book, the grade also appears with the discussion post in Discussions. Previously, grades entered in the Discussion were passed on to Grade Book; however, grades for discussions entered in Grade Book were not passed to the Discussions tool. This change ensures data consistency between Discussions and Grade Book.

Learning Outcomes – Learning Outcomes Management page for a course

The Course Administration page now features a link to import outcomes into courses. This new location is now the central location to manage learning outcomes. Learning Outcomes continue to appear in New Content Experience (Lessons), and any learning outcome you import in one location is reflected in the other.

Quizzes – Rounding Logic configuration variable on by default

This configuration variable controls the updated rounding logic for arithmetic and significant figures questions in quizzes, which now round up from .5 by default. Previously these types of questions used to round to the nearest even integer (“banker’s rounding”). As a result, some calculations will round up where they previously rounded down from .5. Past quiz attempt scores are not affected by this change.

Release Conditions – Release condition for topic completion

The Completed content topic is a new release condition that is met when a user completes a content topic. The method of completing the topic depends on the type, such as viewing a file or submitting an assignment. Similar to the currently available Visited content topic release condition, optional topics can also trigger this release condition. This release condition ignores exemptions, meaning that if the learner completes the activity, the release condition can be met, regardless of the activity being required, optional, or exempt.