August 2024 Release Overview
This post provides a summary of the upcoming changes including those features which we have highlighted due to their impact. This release is subject to change and we will do our best to keep the information up to date before the release to live on Thursday the 8th of August. For more in depth technical detail additional details are available on the release page.
- 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
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
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