Digital Learning Environment Weekly Update: New Name for Our Weekly Updates
Posted on Friday, September 18th, 2020
New Name, Same Great Content
With the addition of a number of new tools that have been integrated with Brightspace in the last few months, our LMS Weekly Update has been renamed to Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Weekly Update, in order to accurately represent our support for you.
What’s New in Brightspace: September Release
Assignments – The new Assignment creation experience now has Special Access options
The June Brightspace release included a new assignment create and edit experience, that will eventually replace the current Assignment tool. As of today, the Special Access options are available to you, when using this new assignment view. You can use Special Access rules in a Assignment to provide students with alternate time restrictions, attempt limits, or different due dates.
Class/User Progress – Include Pulse activity in usage data: Learner activity data is now captured more accurately through the addition of a new system usage metric. Previously, Pulse usage was not tracked, and learners who accessed their courses through the app were misrepresented as having low engagement and could not access conditionally released content.
- Class Progress has a new System Access performance indicator, which displays the number of times each student has accessed the system through the LMS website or Pulse in the last 30 days. You can add System Access to the Class Progress dashboard by clicking Settings.
- User Progress has a new System Access History section, which displays the number of times the student has accessed the system through the LMS website or Pulse in the last 30 days. You can select System Access History to display in the User Progress report by clicking Settings.
My Mediasite
As you already know, My Mediasite is a new tool in Brightspace, with a simple interface that allows you to create, record, share, and publish your presentations easily. Mediasite hosts these videos and also has a Brightspace integration that allows you to embed video content directly within your courses.
Whenever you or your students are prompted for the user name and password when you are asked to sign in to access Mediasite content, make sure you use your Algonquin College user name and NOT the full email address.
ZOOM Tips
- Please remind your students that the Zoom calendar events in their courses (notifications automatically added in the courses’ calendars when you schedule Zoom meetings) are NOT necessarily supposed to match the schedule on their timetables.
- When creating recurring Zoom meetings, before saving the meetings, make sure that there is only one day of the week checked off (assuming that you are giving a lecture only once a week). As the week day when you set up the meetings gets automatically checked off, there have been situations when two week days were checked off by mistake, and this creates confusion among students.
Multiple Ways to find Answers to your Questions:
- Book Online Appointments with our Team. You will notice that, the booking form and the emails confirming the appointments, now have a different name : Digital Learning Environment (DLE) Support
- Email our DLE Team at brightspace@algonquincollege.com. After emailing us, you will receive an automatic reply with your case number.
- Access our Digital Learning Environment Knowledge Base (DLEKB).