What's new in our January 2021 Release?
Set up Google Meet lessons directly in itslearning or Fronter 19
Teachers in schools using Google can set-up online lessons or meetings directly in the LMS. Simply click the Google Meet icon in the text editor tool bar, in Assignment, Notes, Pages, Calendar events, Tasks and many other places in itslearning or Fronter 19.
To create a Google Meet meeting, you need to sign in with G Suite for Education account. You cannot use your personal Google account.
For more information and a video on how to set up a Google Meet lesson, see our support documentation on Using Google Meet in itslearning and Fronter 19
Click Google Meet icon to create a Google Meet online class
Give your meeting a title/name and set the date and time.
Search in Plans
A search field has been added to the Plans overview for teachers and students.
This will help find specific Plans or Topics across all Plans. If Topics are used, the search results will show both the Topic and the connected Plan.
The reorder (three vertical dots) is hidden when search results are displayed.
Click the 'Clear search' button to remove search results and perform a new search.
Search field is now available in the Plans overview.
Search results will be shown as below. Use the 'Clear search' button to clear search results.
This will also release the reorder Plans feature.
Updated PDF viewer
The PDF viewer has been updated for a better experience when viewing documents.
The new modern view appears in the All-in-One grader in the Assignment tool and PDFs added as course resources.
PDFs added as course resources (files) will also have additional options to help readability and layout.
Other improvements
- Office 365: Sometimes students may no longer have access to an Office 365 resource shared by a teacher to a course. This could be due to the account being disconnected OR a Multi-factor authentication (MFA) being enabled after the resource was shared. In such cases, teachers will now see a message informing them what needs to be done to solve the issue. Students will also get a message advising them to contact their teacher.
- Office 365: When viewving Office 365 documents on Apple devices we have added a download link above the document viewer to make it easier to work with Office 365 resources.
- Assignment tool: Peer assessments can now be anonymous. Teachers will, however, still see the names of the students commenting on their peers. To use this feature, teachers can simply check the setting 'Enable anonymous peer assessment'. Some schools require that teachers should not see the names of students, for objectivity reasons. In this instance, check 'Names are hidden when assessing' under 'Anonymous submission' in Assignments.
- Plagiarism tool: Previously, it was only possible for students to submit files that could be checked by the plagiarism service. For example, it was not possible to check image files. Now, students can submit files that cannot be checked for plagiarism, as long as there is at least one file (or enough text in the text editor) that can be checked.
- Resources: When copying resources to the same, or to another course, we previously showed the message 'A copy has been created' when a teacher opened the copied resource. This message needed to be closed manually, resulting in many clicks if many resources were copied. We no longer show this message.
- Self-registration: Based on user feedback we now have made it possible to reopen self-registration on an event. This way a teacher can for example reopen self-registration if it was accidentally closed too early. When closing self-registration, all students who have not set their own presence will be marked as absent. When re-opening the self-registration, this will change to 'Not set' again.
- Email alerts: Users who have activated email alerts in their personal settings will no longer receive email alerts from their 'unstarred' courses.