August 2024 – 3900.98 Release

• Improved navigation between students in Flexible Grading
• Hide unenrolled students from the gradebook
• Status information removed from the gradebook download file
• Anonymous student responses for Forms
• Improvements to creating assignments
• Multiple rules for release conditions
• Ability to ‘Follow’ Discussions for Enhanced Engagement Assessment
• Send a message to a group from Group Spaces
• Math formula enhancement

Improved navigation between students in Flexible Grading

To make the grading experience more efficient, we added Next Student and Previous Student buttons to the Students tab in Flexible Grading. Instructors can now quickly navigate between students when grading assessments.

Image 1. Instructor view of grading an assignment by student with the new Next Student and Previous Student buttons

Hide unenrolled students from the gradebook

Students can change their course schedules at the beginning of a term or semester. Institution policy determines what happens when students change classes. At some institutions, when a student drops a class their enrollment (membership) record is set to unavailable. They display in the gradebook with a strikethrough on their avatar. The instructor’s gradebook can become cluttered with students who aren’t actively enrolled in the class.

Using the new Students Visibility setting, instructors now have the option to hide or show unenrolled students.

The default option is to show these students.

You can access the Students Visibility setting from two locations:

• Course settings
• Gradebook settings

If you change the Students Visibility from Course settings, it will also change in Gradebook settings, and vice versa. Also, the selected visibility setting applies to all users teaching the course.

The Students Visibility setting affects these gradebook areas:

• Grades page
• Students page
• Calculation student list
• Gradable items student list
• Submission tab for an assessment
• Student Activity tab for an assessment

Image 1. Instructor view of the Gradebook settings panel showing the new Student Visibility option set to display students who no longer have access to the course

Image 2. Instructor view of the Gradebook settings panel showing the new Student Visibility option set to hide students who no longer have access to the course

Image 3. Instructor view of the Course settings area showing the new Student Visibility option

Please note that users and enrollment records set to the “disabled” state will continue to be hidden in all cases.

Status information removed from the gradebook download file

Instructors can download the full gradebook or selected columns to work with the information offline.

Anonymous student responses for Forms

Anonymous responses in forms encourage honest and candid feedback from students and help participants feel safe and secure knowing their identities are protected. Anonymity leads to more genuine responses that convey the respondents’ true opinions and experiences. Additionally, it increases participation rates and the overall quality of the results.

Instructors can now collect anonymous submissions in Forms. The new Anonymous submissions option appears in the Grading & Submissions section of Form Settings.

Image 1. Anonymous submissions option

When you select Anonymous submissions, these settings are enabled by default:

• Due date
• Prohibit late submissions
• Prohibit new attempts after due date
• Complete/incomplete is selected as the grading schema for non-graded forms
• When grading, the submission earns the points assigned; you can’t edit or override the points earned

Additional important details to note:

• Anonymous forms cannot be administered to groups.
• Class conversations are not supported when Anonymous submissions is selected.
• To ensure anonymity, student activity, exceptions, exemptions and accommodations are not supported.
• To ensure anonymity, student progress/statistics are not captured.
• Modifications to form questions and settings are not permitted if the form has submissions and the due date has passed.

From the Submissions tab for a form, you can view an anonymised list of students participants along with this information and options:

• Student submission status
• Grading status and grade – At submission, the grading status is set to Complete and the grade is marked (for example., 5/5)
• Post — Graded forms post automatically
• Download all – You can download all form submissions

To view responses, select an anonymous student from the list. You can enter overall feedback for their submission.

From the Gradebook, before the due date for an anonymous form, “Anonymous” appears in the cell for each student. After the due date, the cells display:

• For ungraded forms, the text “Submitted” or “Not submitted”
• For graded forms, the grade

From the Grades tab, you can select Download Gradebook to download responses to forms with anonymous submissions.

When converting Original courses containing surveys to Ultra courses, surveys convert to anonymous forms by default.

We’ve taken care to ensure students know when their submission to a form is anonymous. The Anonymous icon and label appears on:

• the Content Page
• the Form panel where they start the attempt and view their submission
• the Details & Information section that appears while responding to the form

Image 2. Student view – Anonymous label and icon for a form

Improvements to creating assignments

Instructors need robust, easy to use tools when creating their assessments.

To create a better experience, the new Assignment page includes these improvements:

• A new Instructions box where instructors can use the full content editor to craft assignment instructions.
• There are no options to add questions to an assignment.
• The Settings panel now includes only options relevant to assignments.
• Blank attempts are no longer created when students view assignment instructions. The system only creates an attempt when students add content to the file drop zone / content editor. Note: Group or timed and proctored assignments continue to create attempts when students view the instructions.

Assignments created before this release will continue to create blank attempts when students view the instructions.

The New Test page remains unchanged. Instructors can access all the same question types and settings options. Attempts are still automatically created when students view the test questions.

Image 1. Instructor view of the New Assignment page with the new Instructions box

Image 2. Instructor view of adding instructions to an assignment

Image 3. Students view of the new Assignment Information panel and the View Instructions option

Image 4. Student view of the assignment instructions

Multiple rules for release conditions

Instructors need to release course content based on performance criteria to sequence students on learning paths correctly. Sometimes they also need to release content to different groups using different criteria. For example, graduate students may be required to perform additional activities or perform at a higher level than other students. To support this needed flexibility, instructors can now create multiple rules for release conditions.

You can create rules for release conditions based on these criteria: date, time, and grade range performance criteria. You can also create rules for specific individual learners, groups, or for all members.

Image 1. Release Conditions page

This release also improves copying content from Original courses. Rules and criteria now copy from Original adaptive release settings. The supported criterion types are date, time, grade range, and memberships (individual or groups). Only supported criteria types are copied from Original to Ultra courses. These criteria types are removed automatically during a copy:

• Attempt for a gradable item (student submitted the assignment or test)
• Student marked an item reviewed

As before, it is recommended to review settings after copying content from Original courses.

Ability to ‘Follow’ Discussions for Enhanced Engagement

Discussions are an important part of the course experience, allowing for easy collaboration between all course members. The ability to engage and re-engage with discussions ensures that collaboration is active and lively. Users can re-engage when they know there are new posts by following the discussion.

Key Enhancements: 

• Follow Discussions: Users can follow select discussions and receive notifications for new contributions from peers or instructors.
• User Notification Settings: New notification options for the Activity Stream settings allow users to manage notification types for discussions:
  • Activity on my responses
  • Activity on responses I have replied to
  • Responses from instructors
  • Responses for followed discussions
  • Replies for followed discussions
• Administrator Settings: New administrator controls allow institutions to set defaults for the above user settings:
  • Discussion activity on the current user’s responses
  • Discussion activity on responses the current user has replied to
  • Discussion responses from instructors
  • Discussion responses and replies for followed

The default settings for these options are all “on.”

Image 1. New ‘Follow’ option inside a discussion

Image 2. New user notification options for the Activity Stream

Image 3. Notifications being delivered to the Activity Stream

Send a message to a group from Group Spaces

Communication and collaboration between group members is important. For this reason, we’ve expanded opportunities for group members to communicate.

Users can now send a group message from the members page of a group space. This encourages collaboration on content that they have been assigned.

Image 1. The group spaces page with the ability to message a group.

Math formula enhancement

We reduced the response time in the text editor when creating a formula. With enhanced data retrieval, instructors can process formula requests more efficiently.

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