Release Notes v2.63 April 2021

New grouping, allocations, collaboration options, MS Teams API sync, Analytics improvements, Search functionality in analytics tables & more

Updated over a week ago


(06-04-2021) The next release is scheduled in approximately three days. The release will contain the following:

  • New grouping options, allocations and collaboration dialog redesign

  • Microsoft Teams API Enrollments Sync

  • Analytics improvements

  • Search functionality in analytics tables

  • Detection of annotation clusters in documents

  • Manual grading override for Interactive Study Materials

  • Deadline consequences on the review and reflect steps

  • Class & group averages on the student feedback exports

  • Reflection step as ingredient for interactive study materials

  • Automated Feedback standalone app

Pre-announcement for the next release (v2.64)

We are graduating pre-announced functionalities out of beta:

  • Participation grading

  • Nudging (automatic feedback tips, completion checklist)

  • Flag-to-teacher

New grouping options, allocations and collaboration dialog redesign

We have expanded the grouping, allocations and collaboration options for Feedback Assignments, Discussion Assignment and Self-assessment tools. With these new options there is more flexibility when setting up assignment, meaning our tools can cater to more use-cases.

The Collaboration options have been redesigned. There is now a split between how the students hand-in/work and how the reviews will be allocated.

New grouping options: 2 new ways of working as a group have been added

  • When using groups to review, teachers can select the students to be assigned a peer in their own group, or outside of their group.

  • When handing in or working as a group, students can now also review as a group. When selecting this option all students will be allocated the same other group.

Allocations settings

  • 'Required reviews per student' setting has been moved out of the settings drawer for the review step and is now called 'Required number of reviews per student'

  • The 'Allocations will be made automatically' beta setting has been moved out of the settings drawer, renamed to 'Allocations' and opens the new allocations dialog.

  • 'Instantly assign all available peers' has been moved to the allocations dialog and renamed to 'Automatically - All at once'

The new allocation dialog has, at most, 2 steps. In this dialog the teacher is able to specify how they would like the review to be allocated. The teacher can choose between 3 ways of allocating the students

  • Automatically - One by one: Assigns the reviews to a student one by one. This is the default method and also the recommended one.

  • Automatically - All at once: Instantly assigns all required reviews to the student. This option is not available if the students are required to review 1 other student, in that case the teacher will see an explanation of why.

  • Manually: Allows the teacher to manually set review allocations. Only available to teachers or institutions that the feature flag Manual Allocations enabled. It was previously enabled by unselecting 'Automatic allocation' on the old allocations dialog. When this option is selected teachers will see a warning explaining that 'Students that are not manually assigned a peer to review will have nothing to do'.

Allocations step: similarly to the old allocations dialog it allows the teachers to see the existing allocations and make manual allocations.

This step is only available to teachers or institutions that have the feature flag Manual Allocations enabled.

  • If we require students to review 'all' then this step isn't available because there is no point in making manual allocations.

  • It includes an information box reminding the teacher of the chosen collaboration option

  • As before, it is not possible to change an allocation once the student has started reviewing.

Microsoft Teams API Enrollments Sync

Teachers and students in Microsoft Teams can now be synchronized automatically through the Microsoft API.

Owners of Teams will be teachers in FeedbackFruits and Members/Guests will be students. Similar to how it works in LTI, organizations with the API Sync enabled will no longer see a members tab in FeedbackFruits in Teams.

Microsoft Teams API Enrollments Sync is optional. Institutions can enable it when they feel managing the members manually per tab is no longer feasible. ,

Note that we do not have group sync for Teams yet, so students still have to be put in groups manually or randomly, however this is quite easy as the students will show up automatically, as you can see in the video below.

Analytics improvements

A number of changes have been made to the excel analytics export in order to provide a more effective overview of student data.

In Interactive Study Materials, Multimedia analytics comments is renamed to 'discussion threads' and received an overhaul. The 'question cards' and 'answers to question cards' are renamed to 'practice questions by teacher/student'.

All changes are:


All analytics (Assignments, multimedia, presentations and quizzes)

  • Show the participants without progress

  • Add student email column where applicable (so only the 'first' student in each tab)

Assignments analytics

  • Progresses: Make contribution factor clear (Group Member Evaluation) and group columns by task

  • Overall: Show completion percentage for steps in assignment

  • Allocations tab: Addition of a new tab to show all allocations for an assignment

  • Criteria tab: Addition of a new tab to show all criteria with their average and median rating

  • Review tab: Addition of download links for review comment attachments

Multimedia

  • Discussion threads: change name and make nested comments clear

  • Revamp the tabs related to question cards for multimedia

Search functionality in analytics tables

An often requested feature is now available in all analytics tables. You can search the analytics to find a specific user or group. If the analytics table lists individual students, this list is filtered on students with a name matching the search term. Otherwise, if it lists groups, the list is filtered on groups that have a group name matching the search term or groups that contain a student with a name matching the search term. The search term is case-insensitive.

Detection of annotation clusters in documents

We can now detect clusters of annotations within documents. Whenever enough annotations are close together, they will become more transparent, so that the underlying content is easier to see. The more annotations, the more transparent they become (up until the point that some annotations would be barely visible if we make them more transparent). This affects all assignment in which documents are displayed and annotations are made.

Manual grading override for Interactive Study Materials

As with our Feedback tools & Discussion Assignment, it is now possible to manually adjust student grades in Interactive Document, Video and Audio. The grade can be adjusted in the final column of the grading table.

Deadline consequences on the review and reflect steps

A dialog showing the consequences of the deadline will be available on both the review and reflect steps for Peer Review, Group Member Evaluation, and for the Assignment/Skill Review assignments (on this case only on the reflect step).


For teachers it is visible when editing the assignment, regardless of whether or not a deadline has already been set, and for students when viewing the assignment only if the step has a deadline.

Class & group averages on the student feedback exports

The class or group (or average of groups) average is now shown below the received/given ratings in the feedback export.

  • The class average will be shown for hand in and review individually

  • The group average will be shown for hand in individually and review within group

  • The average of groups will be shown for hand in and review as group

Reflection step as ingredient for Interactive Study Materials

The reflection step can now be added to Interactive Study Materials and Comprehension. The reflection step can be added by clicking on the '+' at the bottom of the assignment when in 'edit' mode.

Automated Feedback standalone app

The standalone tool of Automated Feedback provides an opportunity to use a basic version of our current tool outside your LMS for free. In this way, everyone interested can easily try it out and learn the value of providing students with (partly) automated feedback with the help of A.I. This helps to get an initial idea of how the tool can be used in your current courses before integrating it into your LMS.

Please note that this doesn't offer the complete set of features available in the advanced version of the tool. The tool allows you to configure an assignment selecting the relevant criteria for you, invite members and preview as a student to see what feedback students will get with the criteria you select. It can be accessed the following way:

Pre-announcement for the next release (v2.64)

The following changes will not go into effect this release but in the upcoming May release.

Graduating pre-announced functionalities out of beta

We are graduating the following functionalities out of their successful beta phase in the upcoming May release:

  • Participation grading

  • Nudging (automatic feedback tips, completion checklist)

  • Flag-to-teacher

These functionalities will no longer have a feature flag, meaning that they will come into general availability. This means that the functionalities will be available to all teachers in their respective tools.

Participation grading

Participation grading is available within Peer Review, Group Member Evaluation and all Interactive Study Material tools. Teachers can use the feature to assess students based on their best comment(s). In the edit mode of an assignment, the teacher can decide how many comments a student needs to upload. Meaning, teachers can review more specifically without having to read all the review comments.

The Participation Grading module can be added by clicking the + button below step 4 of a Peer Review assignment, or below step 3 of a Group Member Evaluation assignment. It is also compatible with the Configurable Grading module and is added automatically as a facet to be considered for the student’s grade.

Nudging (automatic feedback and completion checklist)

Nudging can be found within the Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation tools. It can be used to nudge students by adding feedback tips as a teacher. This can happen in two ways: Automatic Feedback and Completion Checklist. Both features can be found underneath the settings of step 3, Given Review module. With automatic feedback, students are nudged when the feedback tips appear randomly while they are reviewing their peers. With the completion checklist, students are nudged by a checklist that appears before the student finishes the review. This helps students write higher quality feedback and also makes them think about their given feedback before finalising the review.

Flag-to-teacher

The flag-to-teacher feature allows students to flag posts to their teachers, by selecting from four different reasons to report: inappropriate post, an offensive post, suspicion of plagiarism or other. If they want, students can also elaborate on their reason for flagging the post. by writing a comment. An important aspect of flag-to-teacher is that it happens anonymously, meaning that teachers cannot see which students flagged a post. Flagging can happen at the following locations:

  • Comments in the task overview of Discussion Assignments

  • Comments in the individual documents in Discussion Assignment (including replies)

  • Comments in Interactive Study Material (including replies), both in mini-cards and the sidebar

  • Review comments in Feedback Assignments (including replies, both Peer Review and GME)

  • Annotations in Comprehension of Document/Video (including replies)

  • Comments in audience discussion in Interactive Presentation

If you would like to test these features before the May release, please contact the Partner Success Manager to enable the feature flagged functionality. If you have concerns about this upcoming change, or want to discuss related questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to support.

This concludes the Release Notes v2.63 April 2021.
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).

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