January 2023 Learning Hub updates

This release alters the existing release conditions for Discussions by adding a new Replies Only option to the Posts authored in topic and No post authored in topic condition types drop-down menus. This helps instructors release material, or not release material, based solely on replies.

Previously the only options were New Threads Only and Threads and Replies.

Figure: The Create a Release Condition dialog with the new Replies Only option selected from the Type drop-down menu.

Technical Details

Impact:

• Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to select Replies Only from the Release Conditions drop-down menus.

The Rubric evaluation workflow provides an autosave feature to streamline the evaluation process; however, if an instructor exited the partial evaluation, the automatically saved parts of the assessment were committed to the rubric and visible to the learner. To provide a better experience in Consistent Evaluation (inline and pop-out views), the instructor has the option to Publish the current evaluation, or to Save Draft. If the instructor chooses to Save Draft, the current evaluation is saved for later completion and publication. During the evaluation process, any changes to the evaluation are automatically saved to a temporary file so that partial evaluations are not mistakenly released to learners. Those temporary file changes are permanently saved when the instructor clicks Publish or Save Draft. When the instructor clicks Publish, the assessment feedback is released to learners.

If an instructor clicks Return to user submissions or Return to submissions, a verification dialog appears to ensure you want to discard the incomplete evaluation. From that dialog, the instructor can save the draft, discard the draft, or close the dialog box and return to the partial evaluation. If an instructor edits a previously published evaluation and then decides to cancel before updating, all the changes in the evaluation, including the rubric evaluation changes, are discarded.

Figure: The Publish and Save Draft buttons on an in-process evaluation. The Saving and Saved indicators no longer appear at the top of the evaluation window.

Technical Details

Impact:

• Slight impact to instructors due to the ability to cancel assessments without automatically saving partial evaluations.
• Slight impact to learners who no longer see partial evaluations due to the automatic save function for assessments.

Rubrics no longer have auto-save. A ‘save draft’ feature now appears to save progress.