(01-12-23) The new release update is scheduled for 2-3 pm CET and contains the following:
New releases
Toolpicker redesign
Teaching Assistant role
Improvements for teachers and LMS admins
Improvements in grading modules
Average ratings received as a reviewer
Including student rating of their review as part of progress
Pre-announcement
Phasing out Automated Feedback Coach 1.0
New releases
Toolpicker redesign
We are very excited to announce that by the end of the year our toolpicker will have a new, fresh look! Don’t fret: all the current functionalities will be there, just more organized.
In the past months we have focused on enhancing our user experience by making our tools easier to use and understand. That’s why we have decided to streamline the toolpicker design.
(Fig. 1: Transformation from the old toolpicker to the new and improved version.)
How will it look?
A new homepage: showing a list of highlighted relevant pages and Help Centre articles. Including a search bar to find tools, templates and recent activities. This will provide an easy and comprehensible place where new and experienced teachers can get started.
(Fig. 2: New toolpicker homepage, highlighting institutional templates and Help Center guides.)
A new navigation side-bar, separating functionalities in categories:
Shared libraries: showing all shared libraries that a teacher has access to.
Templates by institution: displaying all templates and journeys from the institutional template course.
My library: including learning journeys and templates created by the teacher, plus those sent to them.
Past activities: all activities created in the past that the teacher has access to.
FeedbackFruits tools: all original tools available to the teacher.
(Fig. 3: My Library page open, displaying the templates that were created by the teacher, as well as those send to them. It includes a quick access to My Library in FeedbackFruits’ Platform.)
Why we made this: In the past years, we have added more and more features to our tool suite. Consequently, things like our once simple toolpicker, ended up being more complex than desired. Before, it displayed the 15 FeedbackFruits tools. Now, it has other functionalities such as: Copy from existing, Recent activities, My library, and Learning activities from the institution. This can get crowded and slow-down user navigation. A newer, cleaner version will aim to provide a better user experience, faster navigation, and easy-to-find and understand layout.
(Fig. 4: Old toolpicker version. Displaying Institutional templates, My Library, Recent Activities and the toolsuite in one page.)
Availability: We aim to release this new toolpicker on December 1st 2023. It will be available for LTI environments (Canvas, D2L, Moodle and Blackboard). Thus, for now Microsoft Teams and app.feedbackfruits.com platform will not be updated. Please read the roll-out plan carefully:
During December, users can individually opt-in if they want to use the new toolpicker. They will be able to go back to the old layout, and provide feedback.
On December 29th 2023 the new version of the toolpicker will substitute the old version for everyone.
During January, all users will automatically see the new toolpicker and will be able to provide feedback on the new redesign.
If you have any doubts or concerns on how would this affect your user experience, please let your FeedbackFruits contact person know.
Teaching Assistant role
FeedbackFruits supports a new LMS role: Teaching Assistant (TA).
The TA role will allow Teaching Assistants to view activities, provide qualitative and quantitative feedback to students (rate and review in Assignment tools), grant deadline extensions, and modify grades. The role won’t be able to edit the assignment, groups, time windows, publish feedback nor grades. These higher-power functionalities remain only available for the teachers (including Learning Designers).
Not much changes visibly. The only difference would be that in comments, a 'Teaching Assistant' tag would appear next to the person’s name, in the same fashion as 'Teacher' appears next to teachers’ names.
Curious to know more about this new role? Please read all about it here.
Why we made this: We aim to clarify between different parties involved in an activity. Up until now, all our users would be recognized as two main roles: either teachers or students. Everyone that didn’t have a student role within the institution’s LMS, would be recognized as a teacher. However, we understand that sometimes there are other people involved in the activity that need to be able to perform certain tasks under some precise rights.
Availability: Currently, this feature is only available upon request. If you or your institution are interested, please contact your FeedbackFruits Pilot and Partner Success Manager or your main FeedbackFruits contact person.
Improvements for teachers and LMS admins
Improvements in grading modules
We have finished the redesign and refinement of our grading module (see our previous release here). Grading is an important part of the student workflow, but it can be complicated. So we’ve focused on making the process complete and clear. In this release, we are adding new facets to Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation:
Average ratings received as a reviewer: only possible when the ‘Students also rate their reviewers’ feedback’ setting is turned on in ‘Received reviews’ step. Students will be able to receive grades from the peers to whom they provided feedback (comments or rating) on their work. This facet averages all the ratings that a student has received on the quality of the feedback they provided to their peers.
(Fig. 4: Enabling “Average ratings received as a reviewer” in the grading module.)
Including student rating of their review as part of progress: When students rate their own reviewers, these evaluations will be incorporated into the progress of the Received Reviews Task in PR & GME.
(Fig. 5: Viewing progress on task from the student view.)
(Fig. 6: Viewing progress on task from the student view.)
Why we made this: We have made these modifications to enhance the user experience, providing a detailed, comprehensible and accurate grading module that leaves no room for doubt. We aim to help students better understand their grades, and save time from teachers answering student questions.
Availability: These improvements will be available to everyone upon release, without the need for additional requests. It applies to Peer Review, Group Member Evaluation, Assignment Review and Skill Review.
Pre-announcements
Phasing out Automated Feedback Coach 1.0
With our Automated Feedback Coach 2.0 available in more regions, we are happy to communicate that on the 29th of December 2023, Automated Feedback Coach 2.0 will replace its first version, Automated Feedback Coach 1.0.
Why are we phasing this out: Since its release in 2019, the usage and possibilities of AI have changed drastically. This is why we developed a more powerful version of the Automated Feedback Coach. The new version is not only faster, more reliable and accurate in responses —it can analyze topic-specific feedback (for instance, based on Peer Review criteria), and it is overall much more useful for students.
Availability: the 1.0 version remains available for all users and institutions who have this feature turned on until 29th December. After that date nobody will be able to access it again. If you have any doubts or concerns on how would this affect your user experience, please let your FeedbackFruits contact person know.
Do you want to be the first one to know all about our newest features?
Subscribe to our Release Notes Newsletter here.
Feel free to share the subscription form amongst your curious and innovative
peers who also want to unlock the power of pedagogy.
This concludes the December Release Notes v2.97.
If you have any questions or experience a technical issue,
please contact our friendly support team by clicking on the blue chat button
(Note: support is available 24h every weekday & unavailable on the weekend).
