(12-07-24) The new release update is scheduled for 2-3 pm CET and contains the following:
New releases
- Engagement Assistant in Interactive Study Materials
- New features in Group Formation: question importance, forming groups within LMS groups
Improvements for all users
- Media Accessibility enhancements: request accessible alternatives
New releases
Engagement Assistant in Interactive Study Materials
Creating discussion prompts and open questions in Interactive Study Materials has never been easier or faster!
We are proud to announce our AI-powered Engagement Assistant feature in Interactive Document, Video and Audio. This feature helps teachers create discussions and open questions with answers based on the context of the study material and Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Fig. 1: Engagement Assistant creating a new discussion in Interactive Document.
The automatically suggested prompts and questions are modifiable by the teacher before publishing them. Also, they aren’t labeled as auto-generated by AI—other teachers or students won’t see a difference.
What are the key benefits?
- Save time: create engaging learning content in just a couple clicks.
- Bloom’s Taxonomy and context-based: all the auto-generated questions and discussions are based on the concepts and topic at hand, ensuring relevance and a pedagogical foundation.
- Ethical AI in education: it is our utmost priority that all our AI solutions safeguard the learner and teacher needs, giving them agency over the AI suggestions, and putting pedagogy before technology.
📚 Read our Engagement Assistant Transparency Note here
How to use it?
To generate open questions or discussion cards with Engagement Assistant, you can just select a part of the document by highlighting text or creating a selection box, or by clicking on the timestamp in a video or audio progress bar.
Fig. 2: Engagement Assistant creating a question card.
As in the regular flow, you can choose what type of interactive task you want your students to complete: ‘Discussion’ or ‘Question’. After selecting, the sidebar will open. If choosing 'Question', you will have to click on 'Open question'. Right underneath the text box, you will find a 'Suggest' button.
Once clicking on 'Suggest', AI will provide an automatically generated question or discussion prompt and an answer. These will be based on:
- Bloom's Taxonomy: by randomly selecting one of the levels, namely: create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand or remember.
- Study material context:
- Documents: 2 pages preceding and the page where the content is selected.
- Video and Audio: 4 minutes preceding the timestamp.
The discussion, question and answers won't be automatically published. Teachers can easily edit all the content, just like if they wrote it themselves. Press 'Publish' to save.
Fig. 3: Engagement Assistant creating an open question in Interactive Video.
Please note:
- Languages: for now, Engagement Assistant can listen or read other languages. However, auto-generated questions or discussion prompts will be given in English.
- Auto-generation speed: on the first time generating content in Video and Audio, longer processing times are expected. Why? The AI has to process and read the transcript of the audio or video file before auto-generating content. It is not required for you to upload your own transcript.
- Identifying AI: other teachers or students will not be able to see that a question has been automatically generated by AI.
📚 Read more about how to use Engagement Assistant here
Why did we create this?
Our mission is to empower educators to teach to their full potential through best-in-class learning design. Therefore, we want to help them create engaging, meaningful and interactive learning activities in the easiest way possible, leveraging AI, while keeping ethics, student needs and education quality as core priorities.
What’s the availability?
This experimental feature is currently released under Alpha and is only available upon request in the USA, Canada and Europe. It applies to these FeedbackFruits partnership packages: Get Started, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies (if tools apply), Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System.
New settings in Group Formation: question importance, forming groups within LMS groups
The Group Formation tool is getting more features! Now you can:
-
Assign an importance level to questions: easily prioritize some questions by assigning each question a level of importance
Fig. 4: Question with assigned importance (3 out of 5).
-
Forming groups within the LMS groups: teachers can now select pre-existing LTI groups and be able to create smaller groups within those.
Fig. 5: Groups formed within LMS groups.
What are the key benefits?
- Enhanced customization: enjoy additional settings to tailor your activity design to your needs.
- Refined groups: the new features power up the group formation algorithm, since now more factors are into play and allow for an even more refined group formation.
📚 Read more about how the Group Formation algorithm works here
How to use it?
Question weighting
When creating a question, teachers will be able to edit the ‘Settings’ per question:
- Allow students to select multiple answers
- Group students similarly/differently
- Question importance
Here, teachers can select the importance of a question on a scale from 0 (ignored) to 5 (highest). Depending on the given importance, the question answers will have a bigger or smaller impact on the final group creating. Students will be informed of the question importance when answering each question.
Fig. 6: Editing question importance in the Settings.
Fig. 7: Student view of a question with assigned importance.
Forming groups within the LMS groups
When creating a Group Formation activity, you can select pre-existing LMS groups in the Instructions module by clicking on ‘Configure’. After choosing the groups or sections that will participate in the activity, click on ‘Done’.
Fig. 8: Selecting student collaboration options.
Fig. 9: Selecting student groups.
📚 Read more about how to use Group Formation tool here
Why did we create this?
We’ve introduced these features based on user feedback. Our goal is to enhance our tools to accommodate diverse use cases and needs, ensuring an optimal experience for both students and teachers. These updates make group creation even easier and more customizable.
What’s the availability?
These improvements will be automatically available to all users with access to Group Formation upon release, without the need for additional requests. This includes: Get Started, Feedback & Assessment, Custom Pedagogies (if applicable), Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System.
Improvements for all users
Media Accessibility enhancements: request accessible alternatives
Both teachers and students are now able to request an accessible alternative file from any multimedia file submitted or attached by both teachers and students in:
- Submissions
- Comments (such as discussion threads, replies to comments/reviews…)
- Review comments
- Instructions (module, per step or in Reflections)
- Teacher notes (only visible to teachers)
- Explanation cards
- Question explanations on multiple-choice questions (Quiz, Interactive Study Materials…)
- Topic prompts (Discussion of Topic)
- Annotations (Comprehension)
We support these alternatives:
- Subtitles
- Users can use subtitles auto-generated by FeedbackFruits (possibility to download and edit them)
- Users can upload their own subtitles
- Audio description
- Users can record an audio via FeedbackFruits
- Users can attach an audio file
- Text description
- Users can write a text description
What are the key benefits?
- Enhanced inclusivity: Our new accessibility options ensure that all users can access and utilize our tools.
- Diverse attachment support: Users can now choose from various accessible attachment formats to best suit their individual needs.
- Improved user experience: By offering accessible alternatives, we make our solutions more user-friendly and accommodating for everyone.
How to use it?
When in a submission, comment, or review that has a multimedia file, if accessible alternatives have been added, the accessibility icon will appear right next to the file. When clicking on the accessibility icon, students can access the already existing accessible alternatives. In case there aren't any, or the preferred alternative is not available, this can be easily requested by clicking on the three dots.
Fig. 10: Requesting an accessible alternative by clicking on the three dots next to the uploaded file.
A pop up will appear where the student can write a a message to the file owner, both students or teachers. The owner of the file will be notified via the notifications bell, and by the 24h email summarizing all activity notifications. Once clicking on the notification, the request information will appear in a pop up. If the assignment has anonymity enabled, the student will be anonymized.
Fig. 11: Writing an accessible alternative request.
Fig. 12: Receiving an accessible alternative request.
To manage accessibility and add an alternative attachment, you can access the file at the end of the notification, or by navigating through the assignment, and click on the ‘+ Add items’ button to attach a multimedia file. Once uploaded, by clicking on the three dots on the right of the file, you can click on 'Manage accessibility'. You will be presented with a pop-up indicating the accessible alternatives you can upload.
You can easily upload or autogenerate your subtitles, upload or record audio, or add a text description in the same fashion as in other multimedia attachments in FeedbackFruits. The accessibility icon will appear next to the file. You can manage accessibility any time.
Fig. 13: Viewing accessible alternative attachments.
The user who requested the accessible alternative, both student or teachers, will be notified back by the notifications bell once the attachment is available.
📚 Find more step-by-step guides for students in each tool collection.
Why did we create this?
In our ongoing commitment to inclusivity, we have expanded our accessibility options to support alternative accessible attachments. This enhancement ensures that all students can fully engage and interact with our solutions in a way that works best for them.
What’s the availability?
This improvement will be immediately and automatically available without the need for additional requests for all FeedbackFruits partnership packages with access to tools that allow for attachments. This includes: Get Started, Feedback & Assessment, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies, Competency Based Assessment, Teaching & Learning System.
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