Brightspace December Update:

December 16, 2024

On Thursday, 12/26, D2L will apply our monthly update to Brightspace. The release notes can be found here, and a few highlights from this update are below. If you have any questions or concerns, please submit a ticket via Service Now or attend one of TLS’s daily Zoom drop in sessions.

Brightspace Virtual Assistant/Online Chat Help: The current help chat within Brightspace is being rebranded as Lumi Chat. It has been enhanced with generative AI in order to improve its responses and usefulness.

Pulse App: External links will now open in the devices default browser.

Engage Widget Update:

December 5, 2024

Monday, December 9th IT TLS staff will be updating the Table of Contents widget in Engage. This will NOT impact the primary instance of Brightspace.

While we do not anticipate any impact to end users, if instructors find that the images they used as content thumbnails were changed, steps to correct this can be found in the following help article: https://uriprod.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0010295

If you have any questions or concerns, please submit a ticket via Service Now or attend one of TLS’s daily Zoom drop in sessions.

Brightspace/Pearson Integration Upgrade:

December 5, 2024

Deadline: December 30, 2024

What’s Changing:

• Pearson is updating its integration to enhance functionality and security.
• The integration name will change from Pearson MyLab and Mastering to Access Pearson.

Impact on Faculty: Faculty members currently using MyLab and Mastering will need to:

1. Remove links to MyLab and Mastering in your courses.
2. Remove related gradebook items.
3. Add the new Access Pearson tool to your course.
4. Configure your course as needed.

Support and Resources: 

IT Teaching and Learning Services has created this step-by-step guide to assist faculty

• URI Knowledge Base

Pearson has provided step-by-step guides to support you through this process:

• Guide to remove MyLab and Mastering
• Guide to add Access Pearson

Support and Resources: Pearson has provided detailed guides, and our team is available for support.

Contact us through ServiceNow, visit us in the Library (Room 227), or join one of our Zoom drop-in sessions:

• Daily Zoom Drop-in
• Dec 20 Drop-in

Deadline: The MyLab and Mastering tool will be discontinued as of December 30, 2024. Access Pearson will be the only supported option after this date.

Brightspace November Update:

November 22, 2024

On Thursday, 11/28, D2L will apply our November update to Brightspace. The release notes can be found here, and a few highlights from this update are below. If you have any questions or concerns, please submit a ticket via Service Now or attend one of TLS’s daily Zoom drop in sessions.

Assignments: For those using Advanced Assessments, there is now a warning message if instructors are removed, leaving students without an assigned evaluator.

Groups: There is now a recycling bin, allowing you to restore a previously deleted group.

Brightspace Project Site Enrollments:

Update: November 12, 2024

This issue has been resolved. Please contact the IT Service Desk with any ongoing issues or concerns.

November 4, 2024

Over the last several days IT Teaching and Learning Services has become aware of issues around manual user enrollments in Brightspace. This has tended to show up specifically in Project Sites and on the Engage platform, when users with the role of “Project Site Owner” or “Project Site Manager” try to add other faculty/staff as learners.

Our team is actively engaged with the Vendor to identify a long term fix for this. In the meantime, if you are experiencing this issue and need assistance, please submit a ticket via Service Now or attend one of our team’s daily Zoom drop in sessions.
  
A member of the TLS team will be able to assist with these enrollments until a permanent fix is in place. To do so, we will need the following information from you:

• URL of the course
• Name/email of users to enroll
• Role to enroll users into

Thanks for your patience and partnership as we work to resolve this. We will provide additional information as it’s available.

Brightspace/McGraw Hill Connect Integration:

September 6, 2024

IT Teaching and Learning Services is aware that some faculty are running into trouble pairing Brightspace Courses with McGraw Hill. Fortunately, this can be easily remedied through the following steps.

1. If your course is already paired, click on your McGraw Hill Connect link in Brightspace and select “Reset Section Pairing”. Remove the McGraw Hill Connect link from Brightspace.

2. From your course, select “Add Existing Activities” then select “McGraw Hill Connect LTIA” from the menu.

3. Proceed with linking and deploying McGraw Hill content as you are accustomed to doing.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the TLS team via the service desk or join our daily Zoom drop-ins. To change the images, follow the instructions in our online help system: https://uriprod.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0010295.

Brightspace Widget Update:

August 29, 2024

Welcome back! We hope you had a restful summer break. The IT Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) team wants to inform you of a recent cosmetic update in Brightspace.

Over the summer, Brightspace made a change to the default images in the “Visual Table of Contents” widget, which is used in many courses to streamline student navigation. If you have customized each module tile with different images, this change will not affect your course. However, if you used the same custom image for all modules, your image may have been replaced with the new default.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the TLS team via the service desk or join our daily Zoom drop-ins. To change the images, follow the instructions in our online help system: https://uriprod.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0010295.

 

Brightspace Course Chat Removal:

January 20, 2024

With the January 2024 update, D2L will disable its course chat feature. Course chat is a lesser used feature, whose capabilities have been surpassed by third party communication tools, and rendered redundant by Brightspace’s own Instant Message and Discussion features.

Faculty and Instructors with concerns should contact the IT TLS team via the Service Desk for a consultation about alternative chat tools.

 

Brightspace Support Enhancement:

December 29, 2023

URI and D2L are excited to introduce an improved end user support experience through the introduction of the Brightspace Virtual Assistant. The Virtual Assistant will function alongside the existing 24/7 Chat support for the Spring 2024 semester, after which the 24/7 chat will be shut off.

Virtual Assistant will continue to provide the same 24/7 access to D2L support agents that we have today, but with the following added benefits:

1. Providing users with direct access to URI support resources via the Virtual Assistant.
2. Intelligent searching of support documentation will get needed resources to URI faculty and students faster.
3. No loss of 24/7, Live agent support

Stay tuned for more information about and documentation of this exciting enhancement!

 

Brightspace Enhancements:

December 29, 2023 – 5-7am

Course Announcements
– A global setting change will be made in Brightspace that adjusts course announcement deliveries – starting December 29 all course announcements will be sent automatically to the URI emails on the course class list.

Public Award Sharing
-A global setting change will be made that will allow users to publicly share Awards earned in Brightspace

Security Enhancements
-Access changes will be made to Guest Lecturer and Read only roles to protect student data

Role Promotions
-Access changes will be made to the Collaborator, TA Plus, and Section TA roles that enhance the instructors ability to control who has access to their Brightspace courses

TA Mapping
-Changes will be made to the mapping of TA roles between eCampus and Brightspace

Office Hours
TLS will be hosting open Zoom office hours at the following dates and times to discuss any of these changes:

November: 8th, 17th (noon)

December: 5th (9am), 21st (2pm)

January: 24th (9am)

February: 9th (noon)

 

 

Texting Error

Sep 2023: The error with texting in Top Hat was resolved.

Respondus Lockdown Browser (LDB) installed in Quinn 215

Sep 2023 – IT is installing LDB on some campus computer labs so that faculty may check them out to secure and run in-person exams. Learn more at the Respondus service page.

Respondus Monitor

Sep 2023 – IT is launching a small pilot to test Respondus Monitor for securing online remote exams. Learn more at the Respondus service page.

Panopto Folder Error

July 2023 – The bug with adding Panopto folders to Brightspace courses was resolved.

New Quiz User Experience

June 2023: Reminder that the new end-user quiz experience is being made permanent in Brightspace in July, 2023. Read more here.