Release 85: Reflecting in your learning journey

Release 85:
Reflecting in your learning journey

Stefan van den TolMay 25, 2020Release Notes

Stop what you’re doing and hold your breath. Monday, May 25th, a fully loaded aNewSpring release will go live. I will tell you all about this new release in text and video.

Reflect on previously given answers

A few releases ago we introduced the form activity. This activity is ideal as a replacement for a physical form. Think of a form that you use to create a plan of action with your teacher. Or an evaluation form, where multiple choice questions can be scored.

Following our upcoming release, you can also use the reflection activity.

This reflection activity is based on the form activity, but also gives you the option to see your previously given answers. These are shown when answering the question for a second time, later in the learning journey. This could be useful when you filled in your learning objectives at the beginning. You can reflect on these at a later stage and maybe elaborate on it if you learned enough about some of these learning objectives. These answers can then (optionally) be viewed by an instructor.

More information about this feature can be found here.

Classes, groups, departments, you name it!

From conversations with our customers, we increasingly heard that there is a need for an extra ‘level’ within the group of learners in a course. In practice, a course sometimes consists of a collection of multiple classes, groups or similar concepts. Learners within these concepts even tend to change from one to the other. This is why it seems logical to manage these concepts from within aNewSpring, we call them learner groups.

After the release, you will be able to link instructors to learner groups. These learner groups can serve as the mentioned concepts, like classes or groups. Learners in these groups will be automatically linked to the linked instructors, and unlinked when they are moved out of a learner group. It works kind of the same as linking learners to instructors. Instructors will only see the learners that are in groups they are linked to.

Instructors can also filter on these learner groups. This way you can, for example, send group A a different message then group B. These groups and links can be edited freely, even after publishing.

More information can be found here.

First steps in instructor dashboard optimisation

The coming period, different optimisations are planned for the instructor side of aNewSpring. The first one is focussed on navigation.

Different instructors can have different goals in aNewSpring. One might focus on communication with learners, another on assessing and a third on reporting. This is why we optimised the dashboard in a way that an instructor knows where to get the info he or she needs.

More optimisations are planned in our roadmap. Our main goal is to make it easier for instructors to know what to do and find what they are looking for.

What else is new?

The order of the tabs on the page where you build the template has changed, based on user tests. Also, icons are added to give more clarity on the functionalities.
The condition (after activity “X” is finished with result “X”) is expanded with the Attendance score in events.
Tagging is already possible at templates and content and proved to be really popular. That is why we also added it to events. This is added in the event overview and at the page where you add events to activities.
When creating a new activity, the legend is gone. Instead we added the info to the icons. Apart from this we gave the activities more space in between and made it more clear what the selected activity is.
A handed-in attempt in a (video) hand-in assignment can now be edited. This can only be done when a learner is also responsible for finishing the activity. In a regular hand-in assignment the title, description and attachments can now be edited. In a video hand-in assignment only the title and description can be edited.
The buttons to edit the blocks and activities in the template are optimised. The button to enter the block-edit-flow is now called Settings, since that is the page where the user is heading. Both buttons are now supported by icons.
The Personal Learner Advice functionality is freshened up and moved to the template settings page. The options in the Personal Learner Advice functionality are now more explaining and the interface is more user friendly.
Your previous choices for the template settings will be remembered, so the next time you create another template, you won’t have to start from scratch.
The way the LTI ID is done at our side has been changed. Instead of making use of the external ID, we introduced a LTI ID, which will be automatically generated. This way, the user does not have to come up with their own ID, and can skip one step of offering their courses in other platforms via LTI. Clients that still want to add some unique information in the LTI ID, due to their way of working, can still do that. The LTI ID is editable.

You can find the complete release notes here:

https://portal.anewspring.com/support/discussions/topics/3000178839 (for Organisations)
https://portal.anewspring.com/support/discussions/topics/3000178841 (for Trainers)

Some of these features are available for aNewSpring for Trainers and all of them for aNewSpring for Organisations

If you have any questions regarding the release, do not hesitate to contact our support heroes!

About the author

Stefan van den Tol

It only takes about a minute to completely inspire Stefan about something. For example, to build a boat. “But I don't know how to build a boat!”

On the wish-list to learn: kitesurfing, philosophising

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