NLU Online Campus Blog
Features and Futures
This blog will introduce impactful new features and developments in the products that support the NLU Online Campus. There will be quarterly updates to the blog that are loosely tied to NLU's academic quarters, as well as occasional deep dives into topics of interest.
New Functionality in Announcements
Brightspace by D2L has recently incorporated some oft-requested upgrades into the Announcements tool. Learn More
Discussion Topic Due Date Bug and Workaround (UPDATED)
Update: This bug has been resolved. Due dates on Discussion Topics will now save as expected.
A known bug prevents instructors from saving due dates on Discussion Topics in D2L. We've identified a workaround solution for instructors until this bug has been fixed.
Restore Groups and Categories in D2L
Do you use Groups in D2L? Have you ever accidentally deleted a Group and had to recreate it manually? Now you won’t have to! With the D2L Groups tool’s new Recycling Bin feature, instructors can now restore deleted groups and linked activities in their courses.
SMS Notifications Going Away
There are several ways to receive notifications of updates from your D2L courses: the ubiquitous red dot in your D2L navbar, email, text messages (SMS), and through the Pulse app. One of these methods, SMS texts, is being retired in July 2024. If you are relying on SMS notifications from D2L, it is time to choose another method.
Quiz Improvement for Instructors
July 2023 updates, featuring improvements to the settings and functionality of quiz timing, have been installed on the D2L online campus.
Quiz Improvement for Students
Taking a quiz in BrightSpace by D2L can involve a little less stress, due to new functionality for managing your own quiz-taking experience.
Pronouns in Brightspace by D2L
Did you know? You can chose to designate your pronouns in your account settings and share them with your colleagues in various areas of Brightspace learning environment, now including the classlist. This blog post, including a FAQ, shows how. (Note that this information is specific to D2L; Pronouns in Banner are handled differently.)
A Widget gets friendlier
The colorful "My Courses" widget in Brightspace by D2L provides a bit of information about the courses you are enrolled in that are currently available to you, as well as navigation to those courses. Some of the language used in the widget was, however, a bit misleading. We have modified that language to better fit NLU's use of the Brightspace Learning Environment.
What's new (in D2L) for Winter 2022?
Winter 2022 classes will implement a new, simpler way of managing Discussion dates. Editing and creating Assignments will make use of a new, cleaner, interface. There is also a fun feature available to both instructors and students in Winter classes: tagging each other with @mentions in Discussions.
Streamline Zoom Set-Up
Instructors: There is a new, seamless way to set up Zoom meetings for your class and share them on a dedicated calendar page. If you would like to use it, you will want to plan it when setting up your class!
What's new (for Fall 2021) in D2L?
Each month, the Brightspace learning environment that supports the NLU Online Campus receives updates. Some updates are hidden deep in the infrastructure, but others directly impact the student or instructor experience. To the extent possible, the implementation of impactful changes is scheduled to avoid disruption of classes that are in-progress. The updates and changes described in this blog entry were clustered to support the Fall 2021 term.
