Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Online Learning Ecosystem Quarterly Update: Summer 2025

Posted by Andy Freed | Start the discussion

We wanted to make sure you knew about a number of updates to our online learning ecosystem for the summer term. The most significant change is that we’re moving Zoom authentication to use PCC’s new Entra identity management system.

D2L Brightspace

Here are some noteworthy updates to the core learning management system.

Grades ¨C Access Quiz Feedback

This update provides more convenience for students viewing quiz feedback: If a Quiz is associated with a Grade item, and their attempt has been graded and published, then students will see a ¡°View Quiz Attempts¡± link in line with that Quiz¡¯s entry.

Groups ¨C Export group enrollment data.

Instructors can now see exactly when students are added to groups. This added transparency can help you identify and troubleshoot group-related issues more easily, especially in courses with complex group structures.

Unsubscribe from all Email notifications

Email notifications now contain an ¡°unsubscribe from all¡± link to stop all email notifications from Brightspace to a user¡¯s email. They can resubscribe within their Brightspace profile.

Quick Eval Improvements

Enables instructors to quickly iterate through their list of submissions in Quick Eval, even if those submissions are from different activity types or courses.

Bulk Feedback

This new feature enables instructors to provide bulk feedback to learners directly within the Assignments and Discussions submission pages. This is coming in late June!

• Add feedback in bulk on the Submission page: You can now draft, update, and apply feedback to multiple students at once, whether saving new comments, editing drafts, or updating published evaluations. Use ¡°Add Feedback¡± for selected students or ¡°Add Feedback to All¡± for the whole class. You’ll also get a warning if you try to save empty feedback that would overwrite existing comments.

• File Attachments with Bulk Feedback: When giving bulk feedback in Assignments or Discussions, you can use the Brightspace Editor¡¯s Insert Stuff to add links to YouTube or other external resources (these links are saved in Manage Files). Insert Image allows you to upload images directly from your computer¡ªthose are also saved in Manage Files. However, file uploads from your computer aren¡¯t supported through Insert Stuff.
  
• Retract feedback in bulk on the Submissions page:?The Bulk Retract Feedback option allows instructors to choose how many learners to retract published feedback from.
  • Selective retraction is also supported — Instructors can select users by checking the box next to their names and then clicking More Actions > Retract Feedback.
  • The More Actions > Retract All option retracts feedback for all users, regardless of which users are selected.

Zoom

Starting June 17th, Zoom will now log in using PCC’s new EntraID platform. This is part of Information Technology’s larger Identity Management Strategy work, and will bring a few key improvements:

• You will stop getting those pesky Status 400 Error pages that require clearing all of your browser data.
• The Authentication process will be able to support additional profile updates like Department, Phone Number, Display Name, and eventually, Pronouns.
• Multi-factor authentication will not be on by default, but will be enabled for logins that trigger a higher risk factor, including access from untrusted networks or accounts that have been flagged.

This will not affect the D2L/Zoom integration, which most people will continue to use for class meetings. Zoom AI Companion is available by request. If you¡¯d like to explore using the AI companion to help with meeting summaries, please email dlhelp@pcc.edu.

Kaltura

Kaltura (also referred to as My Media) is our streaming media platform. It integrates with D2L Brightspace and Annoto and contains tens of thousands of media items.

• We are working to archive and remove old media that has never been viewed. This process should have no impact to faculty or students.
• Our ITS team has reported an issue with viewing Kaltura media on iPhones. Opening a video in full-screen mode may lose some of Kaltura¡¯s features, as Apple devices may switch from Kaltura¡¯s media player to Apple¡¯s built-in media player for full-screen video playback. Videos will still play, but features that may be lost until exiting full-screen mode include: the transcript panel, captions, and Annoto activities associated with your media.

Yuja Panorama

After feedback from faculty about font sizes in academic journals (footnotes, other types of attribution), we¡¯ve discussed changing the severity score for font sizes under 10 points with AEDR. We¡¯ve agreed to reduce the severity from major to minor starting for summer term.

We ask that you consider font sizes when creating content, especially in PDFs and Slides, where students may not be able to modify the size or zooming level.

Here are a few highlights from the June 2025 Panorama release, available in Brightspace now!

• Continuous Scrolling Eliminates Pagination in the WYSIWYG Accessibility Report
  The Review Issues section of the Accessibility Report now loads additional issues automatically as you scroll, removing the need to click “Next Page” when reviewing accessibility problems, enabling uninterrupted review of issues in the WYSIWYG editor.
• New ¡®Undo¡¯ Option Removes Manual Fixes
  You can now remove manual fixes from the Applied Fixes table using a remove button, giving you complete control over your remediation workflow. Once a fix is removed, the Fix button becomes available again, allowing you to reapply or modify the solution as needed
  .
• Streamlined Alt Text Review and Editing for Document Images
  You can now view all images in a document along with their existing alt text and edit descriptions directly within the accessibility report. This update includes options to generate or regenerate alt text using AI for images that lack descriptions or need improvement, with changes saved directly to the PDF.
  

H5P

We will soon have enterprise licensing for H5P! This means that all faculty can have a full H5P author account with support for SmartImport! It also means we¡¯ll have access to drill-down reporting, and students will have accounts if you want to have them create activities as part of your course. We are also doing a new review of each of the activity types to verify the level of accessibility (compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA) and with functional testing using assistive technology. We¡¯ll update our documentation and training with the results.

Hypothes.is

Image Annotation in Hypothes.is will be available starting June 17! Learn more about this feature here!

Voicethread

• For instructors using graded Voicethread assessments, there has been a recent grading change that is triggering a pass/fail setup for grading when using a 2-point scale.
  • To avoid this issue, set up your Voicethread assignment using a 3-point or greater grade value.
  • We are working with Voicethread to better understand this change and will advise on future changes/workarounds