This release contains numerous workflow improvements across all of itslearning.
New Add Course Page
We have updated the page where teachers can create a new course if the organisation allows it. The page is more accessible, making it easier to create courses based on other courses (templates). Course templates can be shared with an organisation within an itslearning site.
The option to select a template has been moved beneath a single heading called 'Apply template'. A template can be another teacher‘s course, a template shared by the organisation, methods from publishers or even courses shared by other websites. The last two options are not available in every country.
New Test Tool Updates
Negative score
There is now an option for teachers to enable negative scoring for questions. This option is now available per question rather than for the entire test, giving teachers more flexibility in when to use it. When this option is selected, any incorrect answers that are checked will result in a score deduction for that question. It should be noted that a question's total score will never be less than 0. In questions where students can provide more than one answer, a negative score is available:
- Multiple responses
- Fill in the blank
- Select from a list
- Select point
Automatic feedback on answer alternatives
In multiple-choice/response questions, teachers can now include automatic feedback for each individual answer alternative. This means that students will see the feedback for each alternative they choose, as well as the results. Students will be able to see feedback as long as they are allowed to see questions and their own answers. This does NOT rely on correct answers being displayed.
Other test updates
- In open-answer questions, manual assessment is set as the default.
- Numbering of questions in the new assessment page is changed to display the same number as in the question list (teacher view).
- Question order can now be changed even if the test is set up to draw a random subset of questions (using categories).
- Option to expand/collapse all in the new assessment page.
Other Changes
- When opening a learning objective that is added to a plan, teachers will now find a link to the learning objective progress report. This link will not be visible to students.
- A few months ago, we announced that we will discontinue our community course catalogue. We are now starting the process to remove this feature. As of this release, it is no longer possible to search for or sign up for courses shared in the community course catalogue. Users who are already part of such courses will still be able to access them. We aim to completely remove the community course catalogue functionality in June 2023.
- Teachers no longer need to go to the Resource page to delete a resource that is added to a plan. Now, they can delete it from the single plan page.
- Some schools allow users to see the Planner outside itslearning. Those users can now see how many plans are current, past, etc.
- If dates are not used in plans, then all users in the course will just see two plan tabs: “Topics” and “All plans”. Topics will be listed first.
- We no longer display the Term filter in 360 reports if you are not using terms in a course. This improves the user interface.
- We have improved the readability of the App library.
- To be consistent, teachers can no longer add past dates to their tasks, but only add current and upcoming dates. This is the same behaviour as in the assignment tool.