What’s New in Brightspace: August 2026 Updates Now Live at Marist

As part of our commitment to supporting an exceptional teaching and learning experience, Marist is pleased to share the latest highlights from the summer Brightspace updates.  

These releases bring user-friendly improvements across several frequently used tools, making it easier for faculty to communicate clearly, support students, and work accessibly in Brightspace. 

Rubric icon is added to gradable activities. 

Instructors can now identify which Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes include attached rubrics directly from list pages, helping instructors quickly audit assessments, confirm rubric setup, and reduce configuration errors. When a rubric is attached to an activity, a rubric icon appears beside the item in the Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes list pages. Written response questions in the Quiz Creation page also display a rubric indicator when a rubric is attached. 

Quizzes - Learner can flag questions and strikethrough answer options 

This release introduces the question annotation option in Quizzes. Learners can flag quiz questions to revisit later and apply strikethrough formatting to answer options to help narrow their choices. 

By selecting the bookmark icon beside a quiz question, learners can flag questions to easily return to them later. Flagged questions appear in the left navigation, allowing learners to quickly return to them. Learners can also select the new strikethrough icon beside answer options to eliminate choices they believe are incorrect. 

Work To Do widget now helps learners with multiple roles 

Learners with multiple roles, such as teaching assistants, focus on upcoming and overdue work by hiding evaluation activities by default. The widget prioritizes learner course due dates for users with multiple roles, providing a clearer view of upcoming learner deadlines. 

Work To Do widget – Automatically marks modules as complete 

This release updates the Work To Do widget so that when learners complete all activities in a module, the module is automatically marked as complete and removed from the widget.  Learners now see only activities that still require completion, reducing clutter in the widget. 

Learn More:
Learn more about Rubrics tool update 

Learn more about Quizzes tool update 

Learn more about Work to do Widget tool update  

Eligibility: Faculty, Students 

Support: digital.education@marist.edu

Submit a service request through our TeamDynamix ticketing system: Brightspace Service Request