Release 116 October 2020 notes

Attendance System - students can now self-register presence

Students can now register their presence in a lecture or tutorial. This is particularly useful in higher education where there can be many students in a group and they can be trusted to self-register. 

Students must be in the class (remotely or physically) to register their presence through a time-limited registration code. It will not require access to specific devices or hardware, only requires the student login to itslearning. 

The teacher/tutor can override the student's registration. 

Here's how it works: 

• Teacher enables self-registration. 
• Teacher displays the code on a projector or monitor. 
• Students go to their calendar or any other place in itslearning showing the event and enter the code. 
• They will now be set as present for the event/class. Teachers will see presence and absence as normal when viewing absence for their course.
• The code changes every 30 seconds to reduce issues such as a student taking a picture of the code and forwarding it to a friend who is absent to register presence.  
  
  

Note: The Attendance system was primarily built to track attendance for colleges and universities, but can be used by schools (K-12) as well.

Security improvement: Automatic Logout

Automatic logout to further enhance security. If you do not use itslearning for more than an hour a message will appear and a 20 minute countdown starts. 

You can continue to use itslearning (click Refresh) or be logged out automatically.

Note:  If you are using features where there is no autosave, and you have not saved, that work will be lost. So remember to periodically hit Save.  

Other Changes:

• Following customer feedback we have reduced the number of tasks that appear in a student's task list. We will not show more than 100 tasks in the task list and we will not list all future tasks, only tasks that are due within the next 60 days.
• It is now easier for teachers and students to connect their Microsoft account. If your profile has your email added (i.e. email is known to the itslearning platform), then this email will be automatically selected when you first connect to your Microsoft O365 account. 
• Discontinued: 'Picture with a description' tool. Similar content can be added through the 'File or folder' tool and we will migrate existing pictures to this tool.