January 2024 Updates

• In Spring of 2024 Zoom will be phased out and replaced with Teams.
• Bongo: Virtual Classroom is currently still available, and will be available until at least March. (We are currently working on extending this until end of May. We are in final approval steps of this). So if you want to use Bongo until May, you should be able to.
• ETS along with about 30 instructors have been piloting a video conference product simply called ‘Class‘. This product adds a ton of classroom specific features which can be explored at class.com. Class can be built upon Zoom or Teams, it doesn’t matter which. Right now at BCIT it is built on Zoom. But when Zoom is phased out and Teams is phased in, we will relaunch Class built on Teams.
• Zoom will not go away until Teams is available.
• Once Teams is available we in ETS will launch Class for Teams and after a month or so of testing with our pilot group we will make it available to everyone. Our current plan is that this will happen between Feb and April, but if issues arise there could of course be delays.
• Once Teams or Class for Teams become available we recommend that all instructors explore the products to see what’s the best fit for their classrooms. So even if you plan to use Bongo: Virtual Classroom for as long as you can, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the new products coming so you are ready for a smooth transition.
• Our goal is to make the transition from whatever you are using now (Zoom, Bongo, Class for Zoom) to the new products that will be available (Teams, Class for Teams) as smooth as possible.

Dec 20, 2023

In the Assignments and Discussions evaluation experience, the tooltip for reporting evaluation errors is updated to include clearer language. The tooltip appears when a user enters over 300,000 characters into the Overall Feedback field or enters an invalid grade into the Grade field.

The new tooltip reads “There is one or more errors in the information entered”. Previously, the tooltip read “There are invalid grades on this page”, excluding various errors that may have caused the tooltip to appear. The new language makes the types of errors clearer as it encourages users to review the entire evaluation.

Technical Details

Impact:

• Slight impact to instructors who can now understand the type of evaluation error that occurred.

Availability:

• This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

• This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
• This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing permissions.
• This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing configuration variables.

As of this release, the Chat tool is removed for all users. Content topics that are Chat-based are not removed, but the chats are no longer accessible.

For additional information as to the reasoning for this removal, refer to Intent to End Of Life Notice for: Chat in Brightspace Community.

Technical Details

Impact:

• Large impact to instructors due to the removal of the Chat tool and the corresponding need to reconfigure courses with Chat-based content topics.
• Large impact to learners due to the removal of the ability to use the Chat tool.

Availability:

• This feature is removed to all clients.

To enable:

• This functionality is removed for all users as of this release. Users should cease use of the tool by December 31, 2023.

When instructors grade quiz attempts, any ungraded written response questions remain as pending evaluation until the instructor manually grades them. Previously, when instructors clicked Publish or Update for a quiz attempt, the written response question’s pending evaluation status would be removed.

If a written response question is not graded, the status shows a pending evaluation message for both the learner and instructor view. In the learner view, learners always see the message “This question has not been graded” until the instructor grades the question. The instructor view displays the message “not auto-graded; a default value of 0 was assigned” until they grade the question.

Technical Details

Impact:

• Slight impact to instructors and learners as a written response question now always displays as pending evaluation until the instructor manually grades them.

Availability:

• This feature is available to all clients.

To enable:

• This functionality is automatically enabled for all users.
• This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing permissions.
• This functionality is not dependent on any new or existing configuration variables.