Over the summer, the Campus Digital Learning Environment (DLE) team and the SUNY DLE Campus Implementation Workgroup were busy making improvements to Brightspace. Additionally, with the start of the semester, two issues have cropped up -- active previous semester courses and students with non-Oswego email addresses. Please read the detailed information below.

Previous semester courses 

All previous semester courses will be set to inactive on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023. This change is needed to improve the student Brightspace experience. The alert feature suppresses current alerts when there is incomplete work in active previous semester courses. Additionally, past semesters with active courses continue to be displayed in the My Courses widget, which has resulted in student confusion. 

Currently, there is no way to customize course or semester display information as there was in Blackboard. The DLE team has brought this issue to the attention of D2L, creators of the Brightspace platform. An update to the My Courses widget is on their roadmap. Prior to this change, students who have an incomplete grade role will be updated to allow access to inactive courses. 

Students with non-Oswego email addresses

Each Brightspace user can only have one system email address. The DLE settings require all email address changes to be manually done. SUNY DLE policy only allows the campus administrator to request email address changes for accounts initially created by the campus. This means that students who transferred to SUNY Oswego from another SUNY campus retain their previous institution’s email address and the student must request the change.

Email addresses are visible on the class roster. The DLE team strongly encourages faculty to request that affected students contact SUNY Online Support Services to request their email address be updated. 

Additional Brightspace changes

Over the summer, some proposed DLE changes from SUNY campuses were reviewed by the SUNY DLE Campus Implementation Committee. After further research and robust discussion, a consensus was reached to implement the following changes.

Ally configuration update

On July 5, 2023, the translation function was turned on. The change was made to better support SUNY’s English as a Second language students as it allows students to translate content pages. This change does not affect assignments, checklists, discussions, surveys or quizzes. It is possible for faculty to turn off translation, but it must be done on the individual course page. Instructions are available.

Slim announcement default image

A megaphone image was added to the left corner of each announcement. This change was global so all past announcements were updated to display the image. The change did not affect the content of past announcements. Faculty can replace or remove the image. Instructions are available.

Language/terminology update

The “Create a File” function in Content > Upload / Create was renamed to “Create a File (Web Page).” In agreement with this change, the “Edit HTML” function was renamed to “Edit HTML (Web Page)”. This change was made for clarity purposes between the functionality difference between “Upload a File” and “Create a File.”

Gradebook and roster default rows

For any course with greater than 20 students, the default row display was expanded from 20 to 50 rows. This change increased efficiency.

Gradebook Customization

SUNY contracted with D2L to create a customization to include local campus student ID in the gradebook. Student IDs are displayed in the second column in the gradebook and the last column in the grades export file. This allows faculty to more easily export grades from Brightspace for uploading into myOswego. The project scope did not include adding campus ID information to course rosters. 

-- Submitted by the SUNY Oswego DLE Team