Academic Technology Updates for February 2026

With this release, the experience for creating group assignments is enhanced. This update streamlines the group assignment workflow in MyCourses by consolidating functionality in the new assignment creation page.

Group assignments are now best supported in the new assignment creation page, which offers a modern workflow and access to upcoming enhancements.

A Group Assignments workflow dropdown now appears in the legacy assignment creation page, directing users to the new experience.

Once Group Assignments have been created in the New Assignment Creation page, users are redirected to the Manage Groups page.

MyCourses now provides clearer and more consistent error messages when students attempt to submit file assignments using unsupported file types. These improvements help students understand which file types are allowed and make it easier to correct submission issues.

The updated messaging appears across assignment submission workflows and Activity Display, ensuring students receive appropriate guidance based on the context of their submission.

Updated error messages for file submissions

When a student attempts to upload a file from Google Drive, OneDrive or Locker with a restricted or unsupported file extension, MyCourses now displays more specific messages depending on the number of restricted file types configured for the assignment.

Assignment submission page

• If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions, such as:
  Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with the following file extensions: PDF, DOCX, or TXT.
• If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message:
  Your work could not be submitted. You can only submit files with allowed file extensions.

Legacy content assignment submission page

• If fewer than seven file types are restricted, students see a message listing the allowed file extensions.
• If seven or more file types are restricted, students see a simplified message indicating that only allowed file extensions can be submitted.

For file assignments, students can now also see the list of Allowed File Extensions. This list previously appeared only for File and Text assignments and is now available for File assignments as well.

Improved feedback in Activity Display

In Activity Display, students now receive clearer visual indicators when uploaded files are not allowed:

• If a student uploads files with unsupported extensions, Activity Display identifies which uploaded files are not allowed.
• If a file has no extension or the file type cannot be detected, Activity Display notifies the student that the file type is unsupported.
• If five or more files with unsupported extensions are uploaded, Activity Display displays a consolidated message indicating that multiple files are not allowed.

Improved validation when configuring Custom File Types in Assignment Creation

When instructors set Allowable File Extensions to Custom File Types during assignment creation, MyCourses now requires at least one file extension to be entered before the assignment can be saved.

If the field is left blank, MyCourses displays a clear inline error message and prevents the assignment from being saved. This improvement helps instructors avoid invalid assignment configurations and reduces submission issues for students.

Note: These changes improve messaging only and do not alter which file types are allowed for an assignment.

The completion progress bars for the Content Completed and Content Visited charts now load asynchronously as instructors scroll down the Class Progress page. Progress details appear for each user as they come into view, allowing the page to continue loading smoothly regardless of the number of users or content objects being calculated.

Previously, courses with a large number of users or content objects could experience page timeouts when viewing the Content Completed or Content Visited columns in Class Progress.

The Enter Grades page now offers improved horizontal navigation, making it easier to work with large gradebooks. Instead of relying on a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page, instructors can use navigation arrows on either side of the gradebook, along with a scroll bar at the bottom of the grid, to navigate across grade columns.

This update also improves how dropdown menus behave, preventing them from appearing underneath other fields such as user names.

Previously, horizontal navigation relied on a scroll bar at the bottom of the page, which was not always visible unless users scrolled down.

With this release, user filters across multiple tools are updated to display Groups and Sections in separate dropdowns, improving navigation and scalability for courses with up to 1,000 groups per category.

Previously, the View By filter combined groups and sections into a single dropdown. In courses with many groups or sections, this resulted in long, difficult-to-navigate lists.

The updated filter is available in the following areas:

• Assignments:
  • Filtering by users on the Manage Evaluators and Manage Special Access pages
  • Filtering by users on the submissions page, and observed submissions page
• Attendance:
  • Filtering by users when viewing and entering attendance data
• Class Progress:
  • Filtering by users
• Classic Content:
  • Filtering by users on the Completion Summary tab
  • Filtering by users on the Content Reports pages
• Classlist:
  • Filtering by users
  • Emailing and filtering by users
    Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Classlist.
• Competencies:
  • Filtering by users when grading an activity
  • Filtering by users when viewing competencies, or viewing rubrics statistics
• Discussions:
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page
  • Filtering by users when viewing Topics
  • Filtering by users when assessing Topics
• Grades:
  • Filtering by users on the Export Grades page
  • Filtering by users on the Enter Grades pages
    Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Enter Grades.
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page
• Quizzes:
  • Filtering by users on the Manage Special Access page
    
    Figure: The redesigned filter shown in Manage Special Access.
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page
• Surveys:
  • Filtering by users on the Statistics page

Most survey reports are now generated asynchronously, and instructors receive a notification when the reports are ready for download.

Both CSV and Excel options are generated asynchronously, while the HTML option continues to be generated synchronously.

This update ensures that survey report generation aligns with the existing asynchronous experience for quiz reports.

The following report types now generate asynchronously:

• Summary Report
• Individual Attempts

This feature enhances the reliability of survey reporting, particularly for large datasets that previously risked browser freezing or timeouts during generation and export.

Instructors are notified of completed reports via the Notifications icon, indicated by an orange dot on the top navigation bar .