D2L Brightspace

Respondus LockDown BrowserYou can now use Respondus LockDown Browser on specific quizzes to improve security during the assessment. LockDown Browser prevents visiting other websites or applications, printing, and copying and pasting during the quiz. This tool is being added to improve quiz integrity and combat the use of AI tools during your exams.

Quizzes UI Improvements

The quiz evaluation experience now includes an Incorrect filter that lets instructors quickly view quickly view answers marked incorrect. Feedback fields automatically expand as needed, providing more space to review and enter feedback. You can now filter the quiz questions to review only the questions a learner answered incorrectly. Helps instructors identify trends and determine whether updates to questions or instructional materials are needed.

• Improves the consistency and usability of the Import options in Browse Question Library.
  • Available import options vary depending on whether the quiz contains sections:
    • The main Import action remains a button for quizzes with no sections.
    • The Import to Section option is now a separate button for quizzes with sections.

New Content Experience

We are starting the evaluation of D2L’s “New Content Experience” (NCE) update, which is the replacement for the current content tool. There is no deadline yet, but NCE has been available for a few years and we’re getting more indications that a timeline is coming. NCE offers a larger interface for students to view and interact with course materials. We still have extensive review work to do and will share more as we learn.

H5P

Interface improvements

H5P’s interface has been improved to make it easier to create and edit activities within Brightspace. The larger interface is a welcome improvement according to early adopters on the team.

H5P OER Hub

You can now search from a large library of H5P activities and share your own with the world via OER Hub. This new feature lives within the H5P interface and makes it much easier for you to share your activities with coworkers and the rest of the world alike. I’m really excited about this feature. Shoot me an email to let me know what you think.

Digital Courseware Integrations

Also known as “LTIs” or 3rd party integrations.

• MyOpenMath – Updating to LTI 1.3, Old links will continue to work until we retire the deprecated LTI 1.1 link. Please update your courses with the new links.
• Films on Demand – Updating to LTI 1.3. Old links will continue to work until we retire the deprecated LTI 1.1 link. Please update your courses with the new links.
• Respondus LockDown Browser – Updating to LTI 1.3
• Vista Higher Learning – New LTI 1.3 integration for Spanish & French
• Currently evaluating ADAPT from LibreTexts

You can find and see the integration request process in Spaces.

Kaltura

• Extended Audio Descriptions (EADs) can now be added by end users. Once processed, end users can also use the caption & enrich editor within My Media to update the EADs.

Zoom

New “Simplified” Web Interface

Zoom has () that more closely mirrors the client application. We will be allowing folks to “opt-in” to the new experience on June 17, 2026. All users will be required to use the new interface by September 6, 2026.

Zoom AI Companion

By September, we’ll be making Zoom AI Companion available for faculty and staff to enable on their accounts. It will be off by default, but you will be able to enable AI Companion in meetings to take notes and provide a summary of your Zoom meeting. If you would like to try this before September, email dlhelp@pcc.edu for access.

We’ve collected a list of recent updates and changes to the online learning ecosystem for spring term. Updates are listed under each application. Updates are not exhaustive but rather focus on the items that are most important to instructors and students or have the most impact.

D2L Brightspace

Respondus LockDown Browser

You can now use Respondus LockDown Browser on specific quizzes to improve security during the assessment. LockDown Browser prevents visiting other websites or applications, printing, and copying and pasting during the quiz. This tool is being added to improve quiz integrity and combat the use of AI tools during your exams.

• Info for Instructors
• Info for Students

Discover available for students

Students can now find and self-enroll in courses that have been set up to use Discover. So far, we only have one class, Math Skills Videos, but anticipate more to come. Please do not add your credit classes to Discover for student privacy reasons.

Improvements to Gradebook Navigation

Small arrow buttons have been added to the gradebook to make it easier to navigate horizontally in large gradebooks.

Kaltura My Media

Adding Extended Audio Descriptions

You can now add Extended Audio Descriptions to your media entries in My Media.

Yuja Panorama

Winter term accessibility scores

The following departments had an average course accessibility score over 90!

• 9CWD
• 9PH
• ASL
• BA
• CADD
• CIS
• CJA
• COMM
• CS
• DA
• DH
• EC
• ED
• EMS
• ESR
• FN
• GD
• GER
• GRN
• HE
• HEC
• HIM
• HST
• IRW
• ITP
• J
• LIB
• MA
• MP
• MSD
• MT
• NAS
• OMT
• PE
• PHL
• RD
• SOC

Spring course scores are being collected and shared in preparation for the April 24, 2026 ADA compliance deadline. If you need support in your class, please reach out to dlhelp@pcc.edu or schedule an appointment with one of our ITS.

H5P

Interface improvements

H5P’s interface has been improved to make it easier to create and edit activities within Brightspace. The larger interface is a welcome improvement according to early adopters on the team.

H5P OER Hub

You can now search from a large library of H5P activities and share your own with the world with OER Hub. This new feature lives within the H5P interface and makes it much easier for you to share your activities with coworkers and the rest of the world alike. I’m really excited about this feature.

Learners can retry Fill in the Blanks after fully correct answers

Learners can now retry Fill in the Blanks questions even if their previous submission was fully correct, supporting active recall, reinforcing learning, and building confidence and mastery.

Other bug fixes

There are other fixes and updates in the .

VoiceThread

SSO update

VoiceThread single sign-on now uses the college’s EntraID platform for authentication. While few users log in to VoiceThread directly, those who do will now use the standard process for other 51���� tools.

Private responses

On May 1st, VoiceThread will allow instructors to decide if they want to allow users to send private feedback to users. This can encourage engagement between students, between you and students, etc.

Zoom

Zoom 7.0 is coming. The interface updates will slowly roll out to users over the coming months. We don’t have very good information to share yet, so we’ll provide more information as we receive it. So far, is all we have to work with. It will have the biggest impact on admins and support staff who manage multiple tools, but we haven’t seen the actual updates yet. Sorry for the cryptic update.

D2L Brightspace

• Navbar: We have added Annoto to the Instructor dropdown menu in the navbar. This will make it easier to use this exciting new tool that provides usage data on your media and allows you to create interactive conversations within the media. See more about Annoto below.
  • This update also replaces the Manage Dates link, which is only used once a term.
  • If you created a custom navbar, you may not see this update.
• Assignments: Assignment and Discussion evaluations are now synchronized with the Grade Book: The individual scores and feedback from Assignment and Discussion grade items are now synchronized with the grade book using the Update button regardless of whether a change was made. The Update button in Assignments and Discussions evaluations is always available to update, even when no changes were made. This feature also enables instructors to verify that the information between the grade book and the Assignment or Discussion tool is properly synchronized.

• Rubrics: Streamline grading with minimum or maximum score for ungraded rubric criteria: This feature updates the instructor workflow of evaluating a rubric and providing feedback to learners. Now, instructors can quickly assess all ungraded Rubric criteria and then go back through to add feedback where necessary. To provide a more streamlined experience for instructors using analytical-type rubrics for assessments in the Consistent Evaluation experience for assignments, discussions, and written response quiz questions, the instructor can automatically set ungraded levels to a minimum or maximum value.
  

• Quiz Evaluation Experience: Improved evaluation experience for instructors available to opt-in now!
  
  All quiz questions are now included in this release, including
  • Arithmetic
  • Matching
  • Ordering
  • Multi Short Answer
  • Significant Figures

• Template 8: The team has completed a new set of HTML templates that you can use to make your course look great, mobile-friendly, and accessible. If you’d like a copy of the template or learn how to apply it to your course, schedule a one-on-one appointment with an Instructional Technology Specialist.
  

• Removal of old courses: Over the break, we will be archiving and removing courses from before 2016. We will be doing this to align with college data governance practices and to improve Brightspace’s overall maintenance and performance.

• • See our Data Retention and Content Archival practices.

Panorama

We have two upcoming Panorama training sessions in April if you’d like to learn more about how to use the tool to improve the accessibility of your course materials.

• When you fix a document using Panorama, the file will now be updated in the D2L Content area, and it will be copied to new courses.
• We are still tracking a bug for when some files do not successfully update. You will get a notice if Panorama fails to update the file in your D2L course. It will also tell you how to upload the updated file.

• Thanks to the (and Rondi Schei), we have added the PDF Max remediation service to Panorama. This addon allows you to:
  • Tag and organize PDF documents in Panorama without needing to download the file and fix it in Adobe Acrobat.
  • We still highly recommend that you update your source document and share that instead of PDFs.
• Institutional reporting now lets us view the overall accessibility of all courses and summarize them by department. We are sharing this information with pathway and program deans to help plan for compliance with the ADA Title II requirements by April 2026.
  • PDFs are still the least accessible file type for all of winter 2025. Here is the average accessibility score by document type.

TL;DR: Use HTML, Word, or Google Docs instead of PDFs unless absolutely necessary.

Zoom

• New Essentials training for Zoom: This session introduces faculty to essential Zoom tools for teaching. Learn how to access Zoom through different platforms, schedule and manage meetings, and utilize key in-meeting features like screen sharing, chat, and participant controls. We’ll also cover best practices for using Zoom within D2L Brightspace and ensuring secure, engaging class sessions.
• Account consolidation: On April 15th, people using their 51���� email address for a non-51���� managed Zoom account will be required to move their account into our domain. This is being done to help prepare for the Zoom Phones project with IT. Our team has directly notified affected users.

• Whiteboard Integration: You can now launch a Zoom Whiteboard from within Brightspace and have it recognize your students based on their D2L accounts. This also allows you to link to a whiteboard that can be used asynchronously instead of during a meeting. It’s a compliment to the Whiteboard tabs option, which lets students author in their own tab much like folks did with Jamboard (RIP).

Annoto

Annoto provides a variety of interactive options for media, including notes, commenting, analytics, and more. We have been piloting the tool for the last year and are excited to make it available to everyone.

• Now available to everyone!
• How to get started with Annoto
• Check out the training options for Annoto

Hypothes.is

This social annotation tool has been popular for a variety of disciplines. Here are a few updates to the tool

• The new allows you to see who has submitted comments and annotations on your assignments.
• See our many Hypothes.is resources

VoiceThread

• VoiceThread is hosting a that may be of interest to folks using the tool or interested in adding more media and interactivity to their classes. It’s a great resources for languages and speech classes. Some of the topics include
  • Voicethread Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (Apr 1, 10am)
  • Voicethread Advanced: Skills and Ideas (Apr 8, 10 am)
  • Using Voicethread in D2l/Brightspace (May 13, 10am).

Other / New

• We have a new student-facing Accessibility Statement & Guides page that provides info for students about how to get support with the various supported (and unsupported) instructional tools.
• Check out the new chatbot from Virtual Services, supporting students reaching out on Enrollment Services, Student Accounts, and the Learning Technology Help Desk.
  
  • This AI-assisted bot will attempt to answer common questions from our website and curate responses.
  • If it cannot answer you, it will connect you with a person via live chat (if someone is available) or email.

D2L Brightspace

Navbar

We have restored faculty access to edit and customize the navbar, but recommend against doing that. Using the 51���� default navbar provides predictability and consistency to students between classes. If you must customize your navbar, we ask that you modify a copy of the default navbar.��

We will be adding Attendance to the Course Info link group based on the feedback collected in October. This change will take place on Monday, December 16th. We will be turning off the attendance tools or fall classes so it will not be visible by default. However, you may need to turn it off for your winter course.��

Discussions

When posting to long forums, the user experience has been updated to include a ‘New Post’ options at the top and bottom of the page, helping users to avoid unnecessary scrolling.

New Quiz Evaluation Experience

The New Quiz Evaluation Experience provides a unified experience for instructors within their evaluation areas of their D2L Brightspace courses.��

Before the experience rolls out to everyone, instructors can opt-in to !

Creator+

D2L engineers squashed some bugs and made improvements to Practices for sequencing and sorting activities. Users should see better performance when creating and editing Practices and workflow improvements for stacking/scrolling activities.

Grades

Instructors can now enable automatic zeroing on missing submissions for Grading within their D2L Brightspace courses!

To get started, learn more about how the .��

Removal of old courses

Over the break, we will be archiving and removing courses from before 2016. We will be doing this to align with college data governance practices and to improve the overall maintenance and performance of Brightspace. See our Data Retention and Content Archival practices.

Zoom

Minimum Version Enforcement

Zoom will be enforcing a new minimum version of the client software by February 1st, 2025. It is currently . We will notify users who are using a legacy version prior to the update. Computers managed by 51���� will be automatically updated well in advance. You can download the newest version now at .

Automatic Captioning in Meetings

Automated Captioning is enabled by default: Automated captioning (machine captioning) is turned on by default for all meetings at the request of Accessible Education and Disability Resources. This means any participant can turn on automated captions without needing to request that the instructor make any changes.��

Kahoot! Integration: ������Ǵdz�’s has been enabled for all current Kahoot! account holders. It is not necessary to use the two apps together.

New Tools, Updates, and Previews

Annoto

Annoto is now available in D2L Brightspace, offering a seamless way to integrate comments, quizzes, and interactive features into your Kaltura, YouTube, or Vimeo videos, transforming passive viewing into an active learning experience.��

Additionally, Annoto offers in-depth analytics to monitor and understand student engagement with your video content. Visit the following webpage to learn how to get started with Annoto in your course.��

If you are interested in delving further into Annoto, you can view a previous workshop training on Adding Interactive Elements to Video with Annoto  (59:17) to learn how to set up the tool in your course and discover some of the instructional use cases.��

Hypothes.is

The new Hypothes.is LMS came out early Fall 2024 and is available to faculty who are using Hypothes.is now.

Auto-grading features for Hypothes.is became available on December 4, and interested instructors can learn more about

Panorama

Improvements to content issue severity scoring in your courses/accessibility reports to come next week, Monday, December 16. This is intended to improve and align the severity settings better with the college’s Accessible Technology Policy and federal laws.

As we finetune the tool for user experience, we will be conducting regular multi-stakeholder reviews to adjust for the best student and faculty experience.

Yuja is continuously improving Panorama’s experience and performance and working on feedback from experiences shared with us during the last five months with Panorama in our courses!

If you have fixed content in your courses, please into your new course for the upcoming term.��

Other / New

Chatbot

Check out the new chatbot from Virtual Services, supporting students reaching out on Enrollment Services, Student Accounts, and the Learning Technology Help Desk. This AI-assisted bot will attempt to answer common questions from our website and curated responses. If it cannot answer you, it will connect you with a person.

Instructional Support resources

We have completely updated the Instructional Support website to improve the organization of resources, training, and accessibility guidance. This was the final project that was part of the Bold, Innovative Growth initiative.

Navbar

On June 17th, Online Learning will roll out the new standardized navigation bar (navbar) in D2L Brightspace! We are very excited because this new navbar is the result of over a year of research, prototyping, user testing, and collecting feedback from both faculty and students. For more details, see our Navbar 2024 project updates page.

Primary Needs:

• Students: Consistent navigation between courses.
• Faculty: Ability to provide links to course-specific resources.

Rollout Plan

On June 17th, we will be replacing the current default navbars used in the majority of courses with the new navbar. This will not require any action from most instructors. We will not lock the navbar until fall term so you have time to collect links and update any documents you have with custom instructions.

1. Courses with custom navigation will also be updated to the new navbar for fall term.
2. For those with custom navigation bars, you will need to:
   • Add your custom links to the Links tool.
   • Optional: Turn off the tools you don’t use

To provide feedback, you can use the “Send corrections or feedback” link in the Help menu from the navbar.

Assignment Annotations update

The assignment annotation tool has been updated with several minor interface updates and should address a number of minor defects. One note is that it will not work with older versions of Safari (15.4 and earlier).

Grades & Feedback

Feedback files are now available in Grades for Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions! If you attach a file with feedback for your students, it will be available in the Grades area. This makes it even easier for students to see/access your feedback.

Manage Dates includes Intelligent Agents

Intelligent Agents can now be updated as part of your term to term Manage Dates workflow. For power users, this is an excellent update. If you haven’t used Intelligent Agents, check out our intro documentation.

Zoom

Quarterly Minimum Version Enforcement

Zoom will be enforcing a new minimum version of the client software by August 1st, 2024. We will notify users who are using a legacy version prior to the update. Computers managed by 51���� will be automatically updated well in advance. You can download the newest version now at .

Zoom Workspace aka v6.x

Zoom has made a fairly major update to the client software. It allows some customization of the interface for your preferences. One new feature that has taken some adjustment is that the menu options collapse as you shrink the Zoom meeting window:

AI Companion

Zoom’s AI companion feature is still under review. We want to ensure adequate security and privacy measures for our students and faculty/staff.

New Tools & Previews

Ally to Panorama

Ally, the accessibility reporting and mitigation tool we’ve had for the last several years is being replaced with Panorama. The software is provided through a consortium license paid for by the Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association. The changes for users should be fairly minimal.

Rollout plan

We will be switching from Ally to Panorama on June 28th to ensure students have access to alternate formats during the first week. Documentation for the tool for students and faculty is available.

Annoto

Annoto is now fully available for users and out of pilot stage! This tool integrates with D2L Brightspace and Kaltura, so you can allow students to comment on videos in your class! You can have students submit videos in Assignments and you can respond in-context to the student using text, audio, or video.

Learn more about Annoto.

Kahoot!

Kahoot! has moved out of pilot stage and is widely available to 51���� users! This tool serves as a polling tool with Zoom sessions for your remote courses.
Learn more about Kahoot!.

Voicethread

An is available and will be the default starting June 17th. The new interface should improve the overall use experience with VoiceThread and not really create any challenges. The new interface has been available to faculty for several months and we’ve not heard of any complaints.

Learn more from Voicethread.

Website updates

The Online Learning website is about to get a face lift thanks to our BIG-funded web designer position. The website will better present Online Learning support based on roles (student, faculty, dean/fdc) and the technical content will be moving over to the Instructional Support site.

D2L Brightspace

• Creator+ is a content styling and activity creation tool built in to the HTML editor in Brightspace. It allows you to add style elements like accordions, simple “check your understanding” activities, and other neat options to make your content more engaging without requiring any knowledge of scripting or coding.
  • If you’re interested, for May 17, 2024
• Course Crosslisting/Merging Improvements
  • A bug that prevented crosslisting for courses with really long names (primarily in Welding and Math) has been fixed. This might be more exciting to our admin team, but it also was a nuisance for some faculty.
• New course template
  • The team has been hard at work creating a new course template that merges the exciting features of the Columbia template used by our Instructional Designers, and the standard accessible and mobile friendly template that takes advantage of the new Creator+ elements. You can learn more from our ITS workshop on May 3rd, 2024.

Zoom

• Zoom will be requiring a new for meetings on April 15, 2024. Our team will reach out to users who are connecting with an older version. Users will be required to upgrade before they can join a meeting after April 15th. You can also from Zoom.
• Community Education courses
  • Thanks to funding from LT&I, we’ve been able to develop a custom tool that handles bulk Zoom meeting creation. This allowed Community Education to schedule meetings for over 200 classes in less than 10 minutes. It also provided Community Ed staff access to all the meeting details to help students who cannot access the meeting links.
• Zoom will be launching , the major version 6 update, in late April. The major update includes interface improvements as well as better integration with other platforms like Google Workspace. While the new version is very AI-focused, we will be reviewing the AI-based features with our Information Security team before those are released. Look for more updates soon!

New Tools & Previews

Annoto

• The ITS are working with faculty to start piloting an interactive video platform called Annoto. It allows you to add time-based comments and discussions into videos right in your courses. It’s similar to Hypothes.is’s social annotation concept but designed specifically for video. We’re excited at how this can help improve interaction in lectures, support authentic assessment, and just make videos even more fun.
• For more information please visit the Annoto Pilot information page.

D2L Brightspace

• New Navigation Experience
  • We will be standardizing the course navbar in Brightspace for Summer term. This change will help provide students with consistent and predictable navigation between courses and is a common practice for course design. We’ve known for years that students strongly prefer consistent navigation so they spend less, and have learned from many other schools that they do not (or cannot) customize navigation between courses.
  • Our team has spent the last year collecting input from faculty and data from Brightspace usage to develop and test a few different navigation layouts. We then tested these different layouts with students in usability studies during winter term. After all this feedback, we arrived at a final design that we will be testing with a handful of courses over the spring term for additional input.
  • The navbar attempts to consolidate common activities by type to streamline and de-clutter the interface for students.
  • A links option has been added to allow instructors to provide access to external sites and resources that are not part of the Brightspace toolset.
  • The Content tool is still the preferred place to organize content and activities in modules to help students organize their weekly activities.
• Self-Merge Tool
  • We’re exploring a tool that would allow faculty to merge their own courses (like crosslisting, but not in Banner). During Spring, our team will be validating this new tool with the hope for launching for the summer.
  • Crosslisting is incredibly time-consuming for our admin team, especially when there are course changes, new instructors, cancelations, etc.

H5P

• Game Map
  • Improvements to the functionality of the Game Map content type in H5P. New finish stages can be added by the author during creation that serve like waymarkers and achievements that can be earned during the activity.
• Smart Import
  • allows authors to generate new activities automatically from content sources using ChatGPT 4. Early feedback is incredibly positive
  • The ITS team will be providing training for H5P in Spring term

Kahoot!

• We are piloting Kahoot! with over 60 faculty and staff. This will help us determine if it meets the polling needs of in-person and remote (or likely to be online with live meeting) courses.
• If you’re interested in participating in the pilot, please complete the .

Voicethread

• A new user interface coming in June 2024! The interface should simplify the current experience for students and should not cause any disruption.

Faculty and Student Help Desks

As part of our Bold, Innovative Growth initiative, we are merging the student and faculty help desks to provide a single source for support with our instructional toolset. Staff are currently training so they can provide everyone excellent support, and we’ll be able to expand our hours for faculty support later in the evenings and on weekends. Look for more news soon!

D2L Brightspace

• Chat Tool – End of Life
  • D2L has disabled the chat tool due to lack of use and features. We notified the six instructors who were using it last December about the upcoming change.
  • We recommend looking at for a classroom chat tool. It’s already part of our college license and used extensively.
• SMS/Text Notifications will go away some time in 2024. The exact date is unknown.
  • Students should utilize the Pulse app instead.
• New Discussion Create Experience is now the default experience in the new year. This work flow is similar to the new assignment and new quiz work flow.
  
• Creator+ is available to enhance your pages and content in Brightspace. Creator+ for D2L Brightspace is an eLearning authoring tool that helps you easily create engaging course content directly within your Brightspace environment. It does this by providing:
  • Ready-made templates: Save time and effort by building content from pre-designed layouts.
  • Interactive elements: Add quizzes, polls, games, and other engaging activities to enhance learner participation.
  • Consistent design: Maintain a unified look and feel throughout your courses with global styling options.
  • Training for faculty will be coming in the winter term.
    

Kaltura and My Media

• We are updating the default media player for new Kaltura videos on January 3rd, 2024. The new interface includes an interactive transcript pane that highlights the spoken text and allows you to search the transcript.
  
• We will update older videos to use the new player for the spring term. If you’d like to use it on older videos sooner, you can re-insert your video in your course.

Zoom

• We are evaluating some of the new Zoom features before enabling them in our environment. These include:
  • Linking from D2L to an enhanced whiteboard
  • AI Companion for summarizing meeting notes
  • Clips – a simple editing tool for chopping up videos into smaller pieces
  • Kahoot! Integration (we’re piloting Kahoot with a small group of faculty. More info below)

Hypothesis

• New easy assignment creation in “Existing Activities” just pick “Hypothesis LTI 1.3”
  (No more having to copy/paste lti link manually!)
  
• Hypothesis auto-grade creation when Instructor scores student in Hypothesis grader bar
  
• Also, the default score is now 100 points, not 10.
• If the Instructor does not want the Hypothesis activity to have a grade column/item – they just don’t score any of the students.
• Get .

Piloting new tools!

Kahoot!

We have received a number of requests for a college supported polling solution. The ITS have evaluated a number of different vendors and have selected Kahoot! to pilot with ~50 people to make sure it works well and meets instructional needs. If you’re interested in participating in the pilot, please complete the .

Annoto

We’re seeing increased interest in different tools for supporting authentic assessment and ways to use video to support learning. The team has evaluated a number of products and has selected Annoto to pilot to see if it meets faculty and student needs. While there’s an obvious opportunity for languages, communications, interpreting and other disciplines, we expect it may have much wider interest.

The Annoto tool integrates with Kaltura so you can allow students to comment on videos in your class, you can have students submit videos and you can respond in context to the student (with text, audio, or video). We’re really excited to see how this works and if you’re interested, please fill out the .

Techquity Grants are available!

Do you have an idea for an innovative practice or technology that you want to try? Consider !

D2L Brightspace

Chat Tool approaching End-of-Life

• D2L is retiring the chat tool at the end of the year (12/31/2023) due to lack of use.
• According to our records, there are only five instructors who have used this in the last two years, and we’ve been in communication with them over the last year.
• We’re recommending Google Chat Spaces for class chats. Documentation and training to follow.
• You can read more about this .

Creator+ is Coming!

• Creator+ is a new suite of built-in design tools for D2L that allow you to create some nifty and more interesting design features and activities. and H5P lite activities.
• It is a suite of tools, most of which show up in the HTML editor.
• More info to come soon!

LTI 1.3 / LTI Advantage: Digital integration updates

We’ve been working with vendors to update our LMS integrations to the latest standard to address security and functionality issues. We’ve completed updates to the following tools:

• Films On Demand (FOD)
• Pearson (delivered via RedShelf)
• McGraw Hill Connect (delivered via RedShelf)
• MGH SIMnet
• Kaltura
• Hypothes.is
• Lumen
• Zoom
• W.W. Norton
• VoiceThread
• BB Ally

New Quiz experience

The New Quiz Experience has been optional for the past several months but is now the default interface. More info on the new Quiz experience.

New Synchronous Quiz option

Do you ever wish you could have a fixed start time and end time so everyone must finish at the same time? Now you can!

With this release, instructors can facilitate quizzes where learners take their attempts simultaneously, which is convenient for in-class sessions. The new addition of synchronous quizzes enables instructors to set up a quiz where the quiz timer starts on the start date and time for all learners rather than when the learner launches the quiz (asynchronous). The quiz timer then ends for all learners at the same time.

New Discussions Creation experience

• Update to align interface with other activity creation interfaces (Quizzes, Assignments…)

Instructional Aide role

• We’ve created a new role for instructional aides. This role can be used by instructional admins, instructional supports, etc. to participate in your course. Please contact dlhelp@pcc.edu if you have questions about adding non-instructors to your course.

Kaltura and My Media

• Coming later in Fall term is a new V7 Kaltura video player for video content in D2L. Among various improved UI features included is a new onscreen interactive transcript, which you can click on to sections and search. You can also download and print the transcript from the player.
• Just a reminder that Kaltura/My Media is available to students as well!

Zoom

• Lecture Capture training: We have several ITS-led sessions on using Zoom for lecture capture scheduled before and during fall term. Recording for
• Zoom Apps – Zoom Apps are add-ons that can be used within your Zoom meetings. There are only a few that have been pre-approved for use and have been vetted by our team. To access these apps, you will need to change your settings at to enable apps. In your settings, click on the Zoom Apps heading and toggle the Zoom Apps Quick Launch Button.
  

• Timer – a built-in timer for your zoom meeting that lets you count down (timer) or count up (stopwatch) to make effective use of your time.
  
• Music – license-free music you can play in your meetings and not worry about copyright violations! Select from a variety of moods and soundscapes to add to your meetings.
  

Hypothesis

• Local PDF Repository: Hypothesis now has a local , making it easier to use the Hypothesis tool within D2L.
• Edit and Reconfigure – Easily an existing reading assignment in Hypothes.is to update an activity in D2L.
• Hypothes.is has added JSTOR integration: This new feature lets you with LMS-embedded assignments.
• Setting up Reading Groups: You can use the Groups tool in Brightspace to .
• Hypothes.is for students guide: We’ve updated our guide for student use of the social annotation tool to support your usage in class.
• See more options and find self-guided support materials on our Hypotheis.is site.

Coming Soon!

Kahoot!

We have received several requests for a college-supported polling solution. The ITS have evaluated a number of different vendors and have selected Kahoot to pilot with ~50 people to make sure it works well and meets instructional needs. If you want to participate in the pilot, please complete the .

Annoto

We’re seeing increased interest in different tools for supporting authentic assessment and ways to use video to support learning. The team has evaluated a number of products and has selected Annoto to pilot to see if it meets faculty and student needs. While there’s an obvious opportunity for languages, communications, interpreting and other disciplines, we expect it may have much wider interest.

Image courtesy of David Vasquez

The Annoto tool integrates with Kaltura so you can allow students to comment on videos in your class, you can have students submit videos and you can respond in context to the student (with text, audio, or video). We’re really excited to see how this works and if you’re interested, please fill out the .