Academic Technology Updates for March 2024

IT News |

We have new updates for MyCourses! See below for details, and please contact helpdesk@ggc.edu if you encounter any problems or have questions.

Attention

MyCourses SMS Notifications will be deprecated by our Learning Management System (LMS) vendor, D2L, in July 2024. For additional details, please review End of Life for MyCourses SMS Notifications. 

MyCourses

HTML Editor – Consistent link creation with the ability to choose link format

As of this release, inserting a link into HTML Editor opens the Add Link dialog which allows users to determine if their links open in a new window (set as the default) or in the current window. The text box in the Add Link dialog also allows users to add text to their link. This provides users with a consistent workflow and control over how links respond in their content.

The Add Link dialog opens when inserting links with the context menu or with keyboard shortcuts (for example, ctrl+K or command+K).

Additionally, the dialog includes a new Insert Quicklink option, allowing users to easily insert a quicklink. When using Insert Stuff > Insert Link or Insert Quicklink > Link, the same Link, Text, and Open In options are displayed ensuring consistent link creation.

Finally, this feature updates the icons shown in Insert Quicklink to ensure all icons use the new style.

Previously, adding links throughout the editor resulted in different workflows, different fields, and different behaviors in the way that links would open. The previous Whole Window option is removed, as it was being treated as the current window and thus caused inconsistent behavior. Several options have been renamed from the previous version to improve consistency:

  • The option to have links open in the current window was previously called same frame.
  • Link was previously named URL.
The Add Link dialog box showing the Link and text fields, the Insert Quicklink option, and the Open in radio buttons.
Figure: You can access the new Add Link dialog using the context menu, or with keyboard shortcuts.
The previous style of icons displayed in Insert Quicklink were a mix of line art and coloured icons.
Figure: The Insert Quicklink menu with the previous icon style.
The current style of icons displayed in Insert Quicklink are a consistent style.
Figure: The Insert Quicklink menu with the updated icon style.
Quizzes – Improved experience for generating quiz reports

This release introduces a better experience for instructors when running and exporting quiz reports with large amounts of data. To avoid time-out failures and screen freezing, the following report types now run asynchronously:

  • Attempt Details
  • Question Statistics
  • Question Details
  • User Statistics
  • User Attempts

When reports are ready for downloading, MyCourses generates a notification that instructors can access from the bell icon in the navbar.

The User Stats tab with the Export to CSV and Export to Excel buttons. After clicking on the Export to Excel button, a pop-up notification box opens. It reads, "Your report is being generated. You will receive a notification in Brightspace when your file is ready to be downloaded". There is a Close button at the bottom of the pop-up box. After clicking the Close button, a notification update alert appears next to the bell icon in the navigation bar. By clicking on it, a pop-up with all finished exports opens. By clicking on the new finished export, the Quiz Report Export Summary page opens. In the main content area, there is a message stating, "The Quiz report export was successful." Below this message is a link with the text "Click here to download the export file" and the Done button underneath.
Figure: Quiz reports are generated asynchronously. Instructors are notified when they are ready for download via the bell notification icon in the navbar.

Previously, quiz reports were generated slowly and would time-out in large classes.

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