Rubric Copy between Courses

Instructors spend a great amount of time building and refining assessment rubrics. Rubrics provide instructors with a set of criteria to grade student assignments. Reusing these rubrics provides instructors with greater flexibility in how they design and build their courses. This saves time and reduces the need to recreate items within their Ultra courses.

From the Copy Content menu, instructors may select the Rubrics folder from the desired course. To copy all rubrics the instructor may select the checkbox for the Rubrics folder.

Image 1. Rubrics folder option from Copy Content menu

To copy individual rubrics the instructor may select the Rubrics folder to open it. Select the checkbox for each rubric to copy.

Image 2. List of all Rubrics

Copied Rubrics appear in the Gradebook Settings area. Select ‘Gradebook,’ select the gear icon in the top right-hand corner, and review all the rubrics in the ‘Course Rubrics’ section.

Question Banks Sorting Controls

Instructors often use question banks to organize their assessment questions. In the past, question banks were difficult to navigate. With this release, instructors can now use sorting controls. These controls supply improved navigation through the questions in the bank. Instructors can easily sort question banks based on the name, number of questions in a bank, or the last edited date.

Image 3. Sorting arrows added for name, number of questions, and last edited date

Discussion replies are available on the individual discussion grading page

Instructors may want to respond to a student in a discussion while grading the student’s participation. In the past, this was not possible. Grading discussions and taking part in discussions were on separate pages. Now an instructor can reply to posts from the individual student grading page. This provides greater efficiency in the grading process for instructors.

Image 4. Instructors may now reply to a student’s discussion post while grading a single student

Grade History: Non-Posted Grades Included

Grade records are important to instructors and academic leaders. These records are helpful for addressing student questions and grade challenges. In an earlier release, we added Grade History to the Ultra Course View. In this release, we are including a log of changes to non-posted grades.

There are no changes to how Instructors and other privileged users access and download Grade History.

Summary list of annotations for inline grading

File submissions can be annotated inline when grading. Now a side panel will summarize all comments in a list. Selecting a comment will navigate the instructor or student to the location of that comment in the document. This change makes it easier to find all comments and feedback in a student’s submission.

N.B. This functionality will be released later in September, independently from the general release.

Set points for manually added gradable items

Manually added gradable items collect additional scores and grades for students. Previously, instructors would need to set the item to display as points to edit the maximum points. Then they could change the display option to letter or percentage. Now instructors can always edit the maximum points value when using any display type.

Image 5: Instructor creates a manually graded item, selects the percentage grade option, and has the choice to edit the maximum points

Test Timer Notifications

When taking a timed assessment, it is important for students to be aware of the time that remains to complete it. However, a fixed display of the timer can also add stress. To support various student preferences, we are introducing notifications for timed assessments. These notifications are less invasive yet keep the student informed.

• For assessments less than 10 minutes, there is no notification.
• For assessments less than 1 hour but greater than 10 minutes, there will be a single reminder when 10% of the time remains. For example, for an assessment with a 10-minute time limit, the notification will appear when 1-minute remains.
• For assessments longer than or equal to an hour, there will be an added notification when 50% of the time remains. For example, for an assessment with a one-hour time limit, the notification will appear when 30 minutes remain. A second notification will appear when 10% of the time remains.
• If a student has a time limit accommodation, a notification will appear when 10% of the extra time remains. If the extra time allowed is less than 10 minutes, there will be no added notification.
• If a student has an unlimited time accommodation, there will be no notifications for the time remaining.

All notifications for remaining time auto-dismiss after 20 seconds. If a student prefers, they can dismiss the notification.

Image 6: Example notification of time remaining

Improved Access to Feedback

Student access to feedback is critical. Students need consistent ways to access feedback regardless of how an instructor grades. In the past, there were times when students could not access feedback if an instructor had overridden a grade. Now students have access to feedback regardless of how an instructor grades.

Prevent copying an entire course into the same course

Course copy is an important feature for building out and updating courses. In an earlier release, we added a way to copy content within a single course. In this release, we made modifications to the course copy options to prevent inadvertent full course copying in the same course. Instructors may continue to copy or duplicate content within a course.

Images 1: Disabled checkbox to prevent copying an entire course into the same course

Activity Stream navigation improvements

The Activity Stream supplies updates about various actions taking place in a course. For example, it is simple for users to navigate straight to a new test in a course. To help make it clearer where a user is navigating, we have added an on-hover underline to the course name and the content item name.

Images 1 and 2: Activity Stream – course name and assignment name underline on hover