DLE Weekly Updates: Enroling Coordinators in Program Homerooms and Other News

*Posted on Friday, August 20th, 2021

Enroling Coordinators in Program Homerooms

As you know, by default, Chairs are automatically added to all program homeroom course shells each term, but not coordinators. This article provides step-by-step instructions explaining how department Chairs can enrol Coordinators in course shells (typically homeroom course shells).

System Updates over Summer

These are some important system updates that took place over the Summer, during the regular monthly system releases:

Assignments – Release Conditions sync with Grades

Assignment release conditions will now be automatically shared with associated grade items in the new assignment creation experience. This ensures that both items follow the same set of rules and become visible/accessible to learners at the same time. 

Assignments – Add categories in the New Assignment Creation Experience 

In the new assignment creation experience, when creating or editing an assignment, now you can assign the assignment to a category. Note that this workaround still works.

Discussions – Consistent Evaluation Experience

You will have the chance to try out a new Discussion evaluation experience that is being redesigned to make it more similar to the Assignment evaluation experience. This experience will be the default (i.e. only) experience in December, and you can opt-out of it until then, if you don’t like it when you first try it out, by using the chevron in the top right corner of the screen. More details will come.

Quizzes – Quiz Introduction field Removed

To reduce redundancy in the Quizzes tool, the Introduction field is being phased out. If any quiz previously had text in the Introduction field, on clicking Edit, the text is automatically appended to the Description field. A message appears indicating that these two fields have been merged. You can review the modified quiz description prior to saving the quiz.

How to Get Assistance with Brightspace

1. Email the DLE Support Team at brightspace@algonquincollege.com. After emailing us, you will receive an automatic reply with your case number.
2. Book Online Appointments with our DLE Support Team.
3. Access our Digital Learning Environment Knowledge Base (DLEKB).

Important:

• Do NOT mark your email as urgent. The urgency flag doesn’t transfer to the case management system. Cases are all considered urgent and are generally answered in the order they come in.
• Do NOT open a case on behalf of someone else. The person who opens a case becomes the client, and all our replies will only go to this client. 
• Do NOT Include other people in the CC or BCC fields (in the first email). When you add other people in CC or BCC, each person who replies to this original email will generate a new case that won’t be tied to the case you opened. This creates a lot of overhead for us and delays for you. If you need to add other people to a case – for example, to get approval from your Chair, simply follow these steps:
  • Email Brightspace@AlgonquinCollege.com. Do not include other people in CC or BCC.
  • You will receive an email confirmation that your case was created. This email contains a special code in the subject line and body of the email. 
  • You can either forward that email to your Chair or reply to this email and add your Chair in CC, making sure to not alter the subject line. Because of the code, all the replies including this code will be added to the same case.