Originally published 17-November-2021
One of the ways in which we decide what to do next, is by listening to you, our clients. We’ve been hearing about how experiences across tools in our platform are not consistent, and therefore make it harder for new users to learn how to complete tasks successfully in Brightspace.
We are working to change that for the better.
Our first steps toward this were to clean up and make efficient our screens for create/edit and evaluation of activities. These were both released for Assignments first. Our next step is to align the Discussion evaluation page with the new Assignment Evaluation page.
Welcome to Our New Discussion Evaluation Experience
The first thing you'll notice when entering our new eval experience is that is looks just like our New Assignment Evaluation Experience. Evaluation tools like Grades, Rubrics, and Feedback are moving to the Right-Hand panel to display in the same way. No more scrolling up and down to see both the rubric and the post at the same time! This is the same rubric component as the New Assignment Evaluation experience uses. That means that it will drop down the side panel or pop out into a new window for grading.
Figure: The new Discussion evaluation screen.
Also consistent with Assignments is the header panels with the activity name display, navigation - either back or iterating through submissions, and the learner's name and profile card. The draggable divider will work the same here, too! The best part? It stays where you put it. This also means that the adaptive mobile view is just as useful in this view with the evaluation tools tucking into a neat drawer when the screen gets smaller.
Figure: The adaptive mobile drawer holding the evaluation tools.
The differences in the display of the Discussion topic and replies are slight. One change that may be noticeable is that the title of the topic or the reply is a link. It will open the post in a new window so that the evaluator can get an idea of the context in which the post was made. Some of our most popular PIE items for discussions are around providing more context. We hope that this helps!
Figure: A reply to a post linking out to that post to give more context.
When is this all happening?
Starting in August (20.21.08) the Config Variable d2l.tools.activities.CEDiscussionOptIn will control the experience. In the initial August release, the variable will be set to OFF.
In September (20.21.09) the above config will be set to ON( Opt-out). This will present users with the new experience first, while still providing an opportunity to opt-out.
*UPDATED* In December (20.21.12) the above config will be set to ON. This will present all users with the new experience with no ability to opt-out. In this case, Administrators can still update the variable if required based of December evaluations until the January (20.22.01) update.
*NEW* In January (20.22.01) the configuration will be removed. This new experience will be the only discussion evaluation experience moving forward.
