Chat – Tool Retirement

• In an effort to simplify our platform, the Chat tool will be permanently retired on December 31, 2023. Clients using Chat will need to move to an alternative tool, such as Instant Message or the Microsoft Teams Course Connector, before the end-of-life date. For more information, refer to Intent to EOL Chat.

Assignments – Accessible Rubric Confirmation dialog box in Consistent Evaluation experience | Updated

To improve accessibility and clarity for screen reader devices, the Rubrics Confirmation dialog box that appears when users navigate away from scoring an assignment or discussion post using a rubric now features the following changes:

• Screen reader-legible heading, text and buttons now appear in the dialog box.
• The dialog box heading now says Unscored Rubric Criteria in place of Confirmation, to improve the workflow clarity for all users, including those using screen readers.

Previously, the text in the dialog box was not accessible to screen readers.

Figure: The confirmation dialog box appears with the previous heading Confirmation. This dialog text was not accessible to screen readers.

Figure: The confirmation dialog box now appears with the updated heading Unscored Rubric Criteria. The text in this dialog is fully accessible to screen readers.

 

Assignments – Consistent settings and interface of availability dates across Avenue | Updated

To improve consistency in activity tools, this feature updates settings and the format of availability dates and states across Avenue for both instructors and learners.

With this release, the Assignments List tab displays availability dates and states closely aligned with other activity tools to make a unified content experience. Availability dates are displayed below the titles of assignments and the hover tooltip includes the information about start and end dates with settings to explain how the assignment appears to learners before and after these dates.

Previously, the availability dates in the Assignments List tab did not include a hover tooltip.

Figure: The format of availability dates and states in the Assignments tool before this update.

Figure: The format of availability dates and states in the Assignments tool after this update.

The corresponding updates for Discussions and Quizzes are planned for future releases.

 

Course Import – Course Groups added to Course Import and Export packages | New

This release adds Course Groups to the Avenue Export Package and includes the handling of Groups on import. Exporting or Importing a Course Group does not include user information or membership in said Group.

Groups with automatic enrollments cannot be imported or exported at this time.

 

Course Import – Improve Import and Export of Gradebook settings | Updated

This feature adds consistency and addresses information gaps when exporting and importing a Avenue Gradebook using a Avenue Package. The following items can now be imported and exported:

• Calculation options (Grade System, Final Grade Released and Grade Calculations). Calculation options are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty.
• Grade scheme associated to a grade item if the grade scheme is shared from the org level. Grade schemes are set to match an existing org level scheme if the Name and ShortName match. If no match is found, or if duplicate matches are found, the course’s default scheme is selected instead.
• Grade categories maintain their display settings, as well as the display in calendar setting and whether they are excluded from final grade calculation. This is already possible for grade items.
• Gradebook display settings (Org Unit Display Options). These are only imported and overwritten if the gradebook is empty. This does not include the ePortfolio Artifacts options in Display Options.

 

Quizzes – Improved workflows for large quizzes | New

This feature updates instructors’ workflows for large quizzes in two ways.

Instructors can now use the Load More button on the initial page load if a quiz has more than 200 questions, sections, and question pools.

If the Load More button is shown, list operations such as moving to the bottom or adding new questions continue functioning as expected. However, to see their changes, instructors must click the Load More button to reveal the updated list.

Figure: The Load More button.

Also, instructors can now select multiple items and use drag and drop to rearrange the question list.

Figure: Multiple items selected for movement using drag and drop.

This feature implements PIE item D10368 (New Quiz Experience: Drag & Drop – Moving multiple questions at once).

Previously, quiz questions, sections, and question pools rendered slowly. Creating and editing quizzes with many items could take significant time. Moving multiple items was only possible using the Move To action menu.