October 2025 Learning Hub Updates

Annotations are only supported for File and File or Text Assignment Types. They are not supported for Text, Observed, or On Paper Assignment types. In response to requests from instructors for clearer indicators of which types of assignments support Annotations, we’ve enhanced the assignment creation experience with better tool tips, visual cues, and on-screen guidance.

New informational tool tip

To make it easier for instructors to understand what the Annotations tool does and which types of assignments you can use it with, a new informational tool tip now appears beside the existing Annotations check box in the interface for creating assignments.

When you hover over the new information ( ? ) button, a tool tip displays Annotation Tools help.

Figure: New Annotation Tools help tool tip.

Clicking the information ( ? ) button opens a pop-up window that explains what the Annotations tool does, and which types of assignments you can use it with. The text in the new window is as follows:

Figure: New Annotation Tools informational pop-up window.

Clear visual indicators make it easy to identify which assignment types support Annotations

To make it easier to immediately understand whether you can use Annotations on an assignment, the Annotations check box now appears disabled (grayed out) for non-file type assignments, such as Text, Observed, or On Paper assignments.

Figure: Visual cues indicate when Annotation Tools are not available for an assignment type.

Updated on-screen guidance

New on-screen guidance indicates when instructors can no longer enable Annotations for an assignment and why.

Guidance for non-file Assignment types

When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because the type is Text, On paper, or Observed in person, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:

Figure: New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because the assignment type is not File or File or Text.

Guidance displayed for assignments after submissions are received

When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because learners already made submissions while the setting was disabled, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:

Figure: New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because learners made submissions for the assignment while Annotations were disabled.

Admin Tools — Enhanced user experience | New

To improve administrator workflows, this release enhances the Admin Tools menu by providing Administrators with:

• A single column display
• Search and auto-complete functionality
• Pin and save tool functionality
• Alphabetized pinned items

The new Admin Tools menu tool also pins the following tools as a default:

• Courses
• External Learning Tools
• Homepage Management
• Navigation & Themes
• Org Unit Editor
• Organization Files
• Roles and Permissions
• Users

Previously, administrators could not search, filter, or pin tools in the Admin Tools menu.

Figure: Before this update, the Admin Tools menu displayed all tools in a single window, requiring administrators to use Ctrl+F to search for and locate items.

Figure: The new Admin Tools menu allows Administrators to quickly search for tools, pin them to the Pinned tab, or review the All tab for a categorized list of tools for easy access.

Course Reset now deletes Learning Outcome data, allowing course administrators and instructional designers to confidently reset a course and start fresh.

Previously, Learning Outcome data persisted in the course shell after a course reset. Manual interventions were required to remove the data and prevent it from affecting reporting, Mastery View, or learner progress.

Learners can now always see the Comments and Assessments column in Grades, ensuring that feedback and links to assessments are consistently visible. The column is no longer conditionally displayed, supporting additional links from tools such as Rubrics, Assignments, and Quizzes.

This update supports future enhancements that add information to learner feedback in Grades.

Previously, the column only appeared when a grade item included feedback.

Figure: Comments and Assessments column now appears consistently to learners in Grades.

This release introduces several new features to improve the capabilities of the Media Library and allow users to have a wider variety of assets that can be reused in their courses.

These improvements include:

• Add Images, Office Documents, PDFs, and SCORM packages directly to Media Library for re-use across your courses.
• Use Media Library’s new Manage Versions menu to upload and manage a new version of your asset.
• Create folders to better organize your assets by type, subject, or however you’d like.
• Share a folder with another user by adding them to a folder as a collaborator.

The following file types can be uploaded to Media Library:

• Video: .mp4, .avi, .f4v, .flv, .m4v, .mov, .webm, .wmv, and the ability to optimize for streaming (2GB max and up to 720p output)
• Audio: .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, .wav, .wma (1GB max)
• Document: .doc, .docx, .odt, .xls, .xlsx, .rtf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .odp
• Image: .jpg, .jpeg, .png
• Course Package: .zip (SCORM Only)

Figure: Create Folder window in Media Library with options to save or cancel.

Instructors can now export quiz attempts using the Export to CSV and Export to Excel options without removing line breaks in question text or answers.

Previously, line breaks in question text and answers were removed during export.

Instructors can now hide the point value for quiz questions to ensure learners focus on all questions equally, without the risk of inferring the number of correct answers based on point value. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios like employee training and association quizzes.

The new feature helps with the following:

• Avoiding Hints in Multi-Select and Written Response Questions. Hiding point values prevents learners from guessing the number of expected answers based on the score, promoting a more consistent effort across all question types.
• Diagnostic Assessments. This option is beneficial for assessments like subject knowledge audits or start-of-term baseline knowledge checks, where the purpose is to gauge understanding rather than focus on scoring.
• Encouraging Equal Effort Across Questions. By hiding point values, learners are less likely to prioritize certain questions over others based on points. Hiding point values ensures a balanced effort and enables the inclusion of control or bonus questions without indicating their significance.

A new option is available within the Timing & Display section when creating or editing a quiz.

Figure: From the Edit Quiz page, under Timing & Display, select Hide question point values to prevent learners from seeing individual question scores.

With this release, instructors can now see a status indicator when a question pool has insufficient questions, allowing them to resolve the issue before learners begin a quiz attempt.

If a quiz attempts to draw more questions than are available in a question pool (for example, 12 questions requested but only 10 available), the interface now displays a warning indicator.

This update adds visual warnings in the following areas:

• • The Grading view: If learners have already completed a quiz containing an affected pool, messaging displays in the grading evaluation experience.
    Figure: When grading a quiz, an error message appears indicating the question pool is exhausted. Instructors can review answer selections and enter a grade or feedback.
  • The Manage Quizzes page: A status indicator flags quizzes with insufficient question pools.
    

Figure: In the Manage Quizzes tab, a red warning icon appears beside a quiz name. Instructors can review quiz settings to resolve the issue.

• The Edit Quiz page (Quiz Builder): A warning icon appears directly on the affected question pool.Figure: The Edit Quiz page displays a Question Pool with an error state, labeled Invalid Question Pool.
• The Course Import and Course Copy workflows: Validation now prevents importing or copying pools with an insufficient number of questions.

Previously, no visual indicators identified when question pools contained too few questions, and these could be imported or copied without warning.

To improve accessibility and consistent experiences for users navigating Brightspace with a keyboard, the tab groups on some pages have been updated. When navigating with a keyboard, pressing Space or Enter on the keyboard now selects a focused tab. Previously, tabs auto-selected when navigated to via keyboard.

The following pages contain tabs that are affected by this update:

• Additional Details tabs in the Content tool
• Attempt Log tabs in the Quizzes tool
• All tabs in the Terms and Conditions tool

To navigate among tabs in Brightspace:

1. Press Tab or arrow keys to move focus between tabs.
2. Press Space or Enter on the keyboard to activate the focused tab.

This change is based on guidance from W3 best practices. To learn more, refer to the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide Tabs Pattern page for more information.

Figure: Navigate the Activity Details, Learning Objectives and Completion Summary tabs in Content by keyboard using the Tab key then pressing Space or Enter.

Figure: Navigate the tabs in Quizzes > Attempt Logs by keyboard using the Tab key then pressing Space or Enter.

Figure: Navigate the tabs in Terms and Conditions by keyboard using the Tab key then pressing Space or Enter.

To improve the visual experience across Brightspace, new positioning logic is applied to tooltip text that ensures the text wraps in the text box and remains visible on the screen. This update is a visual update only; there are no changes to the tooltip text. The majority of tooltips in Brightspace are not changed by this update.

Figure: A tooltip with updated positioning logic displays the tooltip text in a clearly visible text box with improved text wrapping.