What's new with UVic's learning technologies?
This month’s news includes saying goodbye to CourseSpaces, easy export of Brightspace grades to FAST, an important Zoom update, updates to Echo360 group functionality, a Crowdmark demo and more!
CourseSpaces
CourseSpaces de-commissioning is continuing, with access ending December 7th, 2021.
Reminder: Saying goodbye to Coursespaces
Access to CourseSpaces will no longer be available beginning December 7th, 2021. Learn more about the move to Brightspace, and CourseSpaces de-commissioning.
Brightspace
Recent updates to Brightspace include the ability to add pronouns to your profile and the integration of the gradebook Student FAST. See Brightspace’s comprehensive update list for all the details.
Recent Updates
- User profiles – The ability to add pronouns to your user profile and display them (if desired).
- Assignments – The ability to delete assignment submissions.
- Assignments – The ability Restricting file extensions for submissions.
- Course export – The ability to Export release conditions in course packages.
- Brightspace Editor – Added the ability to drag/drop and copy/paste images in a number of areas, including Content Module/Topic Descriptions and Grades – Description.
- Content – Added Print Button to PDF file types in the Classic Content Experience.
- Course Import – View Course Import history, which includes the status of the import, who created the import and a timestamp for the original import attempt.
- Email – Increased Limits for To and CC Fields. The number of email addresses that can be included in the “To” and “cc” fields has increased from 50 to 200.
- Manage Files – Users receive warning message when uploading a file blocked due to security
Gradebook integration with FAST
The Brightspace gradebook has now been integrated with the Student FAST grade tool.
Please see the FAST documentation for details on how to use this feature in FAST:
Training videos, How to Submit Final Course Grades through FAST Student.
- This feature is not currently available for cross-listed Brightspace courses.
- The FAST requires whole numbers (imported or otherwise) when submitting grades for students. In order to import the grades from Brightspace, the course gradebook will need to be configured to display whole numbers only. This can be done during setup, or once the course is complete and grades are ready to be imported.
Coming Soon - December release
The December Brightspace release, taking place December 21 has some notable changes to the Discussion and Assignment experiences:
- The New Assignment Create/Edit Experience will become the default editor. This feature is already enabled by default, but the ability to opt out will be removed.
- The New Discussion Evaluation Experience will become the default in January. This feature is already enabled by default, but the ability to opt out will be removed.
- Changes to Availability and Locking Dates for a Consolidated Dates Workflow will be implemented. D2L is working to improve consistency of dates, consistency and control of behavior of activity visibility and accessibility, and consistency and control of calendar events across all tools in the system, and is beginning with the Discussion activity. More details can be found on this Brightspace community article.
Crowdmark
Learn more about this grading tool by attending a short demonstration hosted by Technology Integrated Learning and the vendor.
Crowdmark Demonstration
Curious about how you can use Crowdmark in your course? Attend a vendor-led demonstration on December 8th!
Crowdmark Maintenance - December 30
Please be advised that the Crowdmark grading and assessment system will be unavailable on Thursday Dec 30, 2021, from 5:00am to 9:00pm PST for scheduled maintenance.
They will be performing their annual tune-up and upgrading our infrastructure to maintain the security, performance and stability of our platform
Echo360
Echo360 has some exciting new features coming in January.
Email notifications paused - December 8
Echo360 email notifications will be paused for approximately one week beginning Wednesday, December 8th to facilitate the migration of UVic’s Video on Demand service to the platform.
Update to Group functionality
Easier to use Groups Membership Page – Echo360 has updated Groups Membership page. Changes include pre-configured Access Levels, to more easily add users to a group, or update existing users’ permissions. There is also a Custom access level, allowing for very granular control of any given member’s group media permissions.
See Managing Group Member Rights and Permissions for more information.
Update - January 11/12
The upcoming changes involve three key components, which are explained below:
- The Groups feature will be renamed Collections
- Collections will be added to the Library
- The existing class collection feature on the section homepage will be renamed to “Class Group” to avoid confusion
- Learn more learn from this Echo360 blog post!
Zoom
Zoom regularly releases new features, for the best experience update your Zoom client regularly.
Updating Zoom Regularly
In order to maintain the best experience, it is important to keep you Zoom client up to date. Zoom will soon be implementing a 9 month release window, making it even more important to stay up to date.
Zoom recently posted a security bulletin regarding a vulnerability in their Zoom Client for all platforms (e.g. Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Linux). Please update your client to the latest version. The latest available version as of November 28, 2021 is 5.8.6.
Additional resources:
