Written by: Jackie Guan, Product Manager, D2L.
Important: A new org-level configuration variable, which turns Advanced Assessments on or off, will be added in a future release, it is not available now.
Advanced Assessment (AA) is a set of features that enable instructors and admins to create and evaluate assignments with one or more instructors, manage instructor workflows with delegation, and restrict which instructor in the course can publish evaluations for learners to view. These features are live in the production environment in the August 2024/20.24.8 release and enabled by default.
To find out more about Advanced Assessment and the various features, refer to the updated Advanced Assessment for all environments of Brightspace blog post.
Listening to client feedback, we learned that the Advanced Assessment launch is large and will require additional training materials and time with users. August is also when many are away on holiday and unavailable for training. Therefore, we want to give clients more control and time to adapt to the new feature. We will be adding a configuration variable to enable/disable the AA features, allowing administrators to show/hide these features in the coming months.
Advanced Assessment Opt Out form
Important: We recommend that once the feature is enabled, it remains on to ensure optimal performance and consistency in your operations. If you do not turn it off using the form below now, it is not recommended to toggle it on and off later.
If you are interested in keeping Advanced Assessments features on permanently, you do not need to complete the form. However, if you want to control the rollout at any point, to opt out of the August Advanced Assessment launch in production, fill out this form before your August update, and we will exclude your production environment from Advanced Assessment. In this case, the features will be hidden on your site, and you can use the future configuration variable to choose when to enable them.
Advanced Assessment Configuration Variable
Goal of the future configuration variable
- To enable more control for clients to turn AA features on or off, Advanced Assessment will be available in the Assignment tool when the configuration variable is enabled.
- If the feature is turned on and AA assignments are created, we will keep the created assignments and allow instructors to finish evaluation if needed.
The future configuration variable details
Name
- d2l.Tools.Activities.AdvancedAssessments
Location
- Admin Tools > Config Variable Browser > Tools > Activities
Editing Permissions
Config variable is to be enabled/disabled at the org level
- Admins can add exceptions for the course level
Figure: An example of the Manage Allocations AA feature restricted by an administrator.
Figure: An example of assigning publishers and evaluators AA features restricted by an administrator.
Description
When enabled, Advanced Assessment features such as Co-Marking, Delegation, and Multi-Evaluator will be available in the Assignment tool for courses with more than one evaluator who has the Give feedback permission. These features allow instructors to better manage large class sizes, share evaluations in single or multiple evaluation formats and decide who can publish final evaluations for learners to view.
How will it work?
When the configuration variable is ON, Advanced Assessment features are available, allowing users to create, edit, and evaluate Advanced Assessment assignments.
When the configuration variable is OFF, Advanced Assessment features are not available.
- Previously created Advanced Assessment assignments, if any, will be read-only on the Assignment creation page, allowing users to review the information.
- These assignments will remain available for evaluation so that instructors can finish their work and ensure assignments are not left incomplete.
- Messaging will be added in Assignment Creation to inform users that Advanced Assessment is no longer available for these assignments and that settings are locked.
Advanced Assessment features are designed for optimal performance with the configuration variable enabled. We recommend that clients remain enabled once they enable these features.
