Several upgrades and enhancements are coming to iCollege today, October 25. Please see the list below for full details:
TurnItIn PeerMark is Now Available
TurnItIn PeerMark is a tool for facilitating peer review assignments in iCollege. This tool is now available in all courses in iCollege.
To get started, review the Using TurnItIn PeerMark for Instructors handout in the knowledge base. To help students use the tool, review the Using TurnItIn PeerMark for Students handout.
End of Life Support for Internet Explorer
Microsoft Internet Explorer is approaching End of Life (EOL) status as a supported browser. Starting January 2020, Brightspace Learning Environment will no longer support Internet Explorer. To provide more visibility about this upcoming change, when an existing user logs in to Brightspace Learning Environment using Internet Explorer, a banner now informs the user about the approaching EOL date. The banner also includes a recommendation to upgrade their browser and a link to the EOL communication on the Brightspace Community. After logging in, the user can dismiss the banner for that session. For each subsequent session, the banner displays; however, the user can dismiss it.
For an optimal experience that offers better performance, accessibility, and security, D2L strongly recommends that all users access Brightspace Learning Environment with a supported browser. Click here for a list of supported browsers.
Improvements to Consistency
To provide a more consistent experience, there have been changes to update the language, interface controls, and workflows throughout Brightspace Learning Environment.
The language and methods by which instructors make activities hidden or visible to learners across different tools is now consistent. Changes include:
- The visibility control now uses a checkbox with the consistent terminology Hide from users in all instances. This change affects the Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, Surveys, and Grades (grade item and grade category) tools.
- In Discussions, the Visibility, Availability Dates, and Locking options move from the Properties tab to the Restrictions
- The Hide from users checkbox appears under the title field of all activity creation pages in the Content tool.
- In Content, on the table of contents, there is now a visibility icon button for use with both content topics and modules. The icon serves as a visibility switch. The visibility status of a topic appears when the topic is not visible, when the table of contents is in bulk edit mode, or when a topic is in edit-in-place mode. The table of contents fly-out no longer provides the ability to switch the visibility of a topic or module.
- In Content, the Hide from users and Make Visible to users options are available in the context menus for topics and modules in the table of contents, and in the context menus of topics on the topics’ detail page.
The Instructor view of the list page of several tools now has consistent icons in a consistent order for activity restrictions. Changes include:
Across many tools, including Quizzes, Surveys, Grades, and Discussions, the Restrictions tab provides the ability to control the visibility status and availability dates for an activity. Changes include:
- Changes to the Restrictions tabs in Quizzes, Survey, Grades, and Discussions to show Hide from Users with a check box control to turn on or turn off the visibility of the item.
- Previous sections containing the visibility settings in Surveys, Grades, and Discussions (for Forums and Topics) are renamed to Availability.
- Availability dates in Grades (for a grade item and grade category) and Discussions (for Forums and Topics) now appear and can be hidden.
There is now a consistent individual and bulk process workflow to hide or show activities. With this workflow, users can quickly change the visibility status from the list of activities without first having to edit the activity. Changes include:
- In Quizzes, Surveys, and Grades, users can hide or show individual items under the context menu of an individual item or bulk items from the More Actions button at the top of the page.
- In Discussions, users can hide or show individual items under the context menu of each topic and forum. Bulk hide or show is not available for Discussions.
The language and methods by which instructors save content on the New Activity page (Content tool) are now consistent. Whether the item is visible or not is determined by the Hide from Users permission check box. Changes include:
- Publish and Save as Draft have been combined into a single button called Save.
If you would like more information about these upgrades or would like assistance with using them in your courses, please reach out to the CETL Learning Technology staff at your campus.
