Stealth Updates to the Online Courses
The Web development team in the Center is always busy making changes, adding features, and fixing bugs with the online course system. In the past few weeks, we've added quite a few small features throughout the online courses that you should know about:
- BBS
- Emoticon support can now be turned off for an individual BBS. This option is on the "BBS Settings" panel in the BBS admin in each course BBS.
- You can now search by author only in the BBS search. You do not need to enter in a search term.
- The BBS contribution report now displays a link back to the original topic where each student post was made.
- If you click the link to see the original post in either the BBS search results or the BBS contribution report, and you have already viewed that topic and all of the messages in that topic, the topic automatically expands to show all posts. Previously, the topic would default to only showing new posts or the last three posts in the topic (the default behavior of all previously viewed topics in the BBS). This would often result in the original post not being shown on the screen, causing confusion.
- Faculty and TAs are now listed in the "Search by Author" select list in the BBS search.
- Auditors and Guests are now listed as [Auditor] and [Guest] in the "Search by Author" select list in the BBS search.
- Online Library
- Long Web links now wrap to multiple lines and do not spill over into the right side of the Online Library management view.
- If you are using an old version of the Flash Player, you will get prompted to upgrade to the latest version when you try to upload a file
- Quiz Generator
- People who access a quiz using a mobile device (phone or tablet) are given a warning that completing quizzes on mobile devices is not currently supported.
- If faculty or TAs access a multiple-access, graded quiz, they are given the option to start over with a new, blank copy of the quiz from the "You are about to enter a graded quiz" warning page. This will hopefully further alleviate confusion around previewing multi-access quizzes and seeing the version you originally started with but not subsequent changes to the quiz setup (including adding and removing questions).
- Additional space has been added between the display of questions on the email copies of student results to provide better clarity of when one question ends and another one begins in that email message.
- Drop Box
- The Drop Box now includes the student's JHED ID in the file name, if they have a JHED ID. If the student does not have a JHED ID, their eLearning account ID is used instead. This is useful when two students in the same class have the exact same first and last name (i.e.; John Smith).
- Gradebook
- When you upload a ZIP file of files to return to students, the Gradebook attempts to match students to their files by the student JHED ID in the file name, if one exists. This ensures that students with the same first and last name (i.e.; Chin Chin) get the correct file assigned to them as JHED IDs are unique.
- Course Groups
- You can now display only students who are not assigned to any group in the "select from" list on the group editing page.
- Class Email
- If you select "Students" as the recipient list, the "Display on the class email archive page." checkbox is automatically selected.
- Surveys
- The page loading time for custom (i.e.; non-lecture, non-LiveTalk evaluation) surveys has been significantly improved.
- Syllabus
- Course learning objectives pulled from the SPH Course Catalog system are now listed separately in that system and always displayed in a bullet list in the online courses system.