May 31, 2024

Release 104

Overview

In Release 104, we've introduced the following features:

• Communications Hub for peer-to-peer interactions
• Class announcements
• Grading book for instructors

We've also made several enhancements to improve user experience and ongoing work on surveys, grading book, and further improvements to the Compositions and Media Block editors that will be available in upcoming releases.

What's new

Communications Hub for peer-to-peer interactions

The Communications Hub with the new peer-to-peer (P2P) chat is designed to enhance direct outreach and interaction between instructors and learners. This functionality offers a smooth messaging experience integrated directly into the Constructor LMS.

With this new feature, instructors and learners can initiate direct messages to each other, which ensures prompt and private communication. They can also create group chats. The chat interface supports text styling, code snippets and mathematical formulas. Users can also record and send audio and video messages as well as exchange links and files. Each user's chat history is stored in the LMS for future reference to maintain a continuous and accessible record of interactions.

Overall, this enhancement aims to improve communication, engagement, and support in education. The new P2P chat functionality enhances interaction dynamics and fosters a connected learning community.

Class announcements

We’ve also introduced the Class Announcements feature in the Communications Hub to enhance course communication. Instructors can post crucial updates directly to dedicated channels for each course. Posted announcements are instantly visible to all enrolled learners across various touchpoints (on the Communications Hub icon in the LMS header, in the hub interface, and on course tiles). This feature ensures all enrolled learners receive timely notifications, visible across the platform. Announcement channels support rich media formats to ensure engaging content.

Grading book for instructors

We've added the Gradebook item to the Teaching section of the menu. This tool displays all scores and grades existing in the system for a selected objective. Instructors can choose an objective and, optionally, a term to view all gradable activities for each learner. They can manually grade assignments or review the highest recorded attempt for the selected objective.

Improvements and fixes

Improvements

• Duration in an activity's properties. This new field is added to Compositions, Media blocks, Interactive component, and other content libraries that can be populated with a time value in minutes, except for Vimeo, where this value is set automatically. The content flow configuration for a composition has two parameters: Duration and Progress weight. Progress weight indicates how much this activity adds to the overall learner progress in the composition.
• Composition editor now supports showing content of all sub-compositions. Content authors can now easily review all items of the course, set status for activities, see in preview what gates are set and what content is draft. They can drag-and-drop content from a content library to any place in the composition or move items between compositions.
• Data in primary reports can be filtered to show only active users and objectives. Users, units, groups, and objectives in custom reports have a separate property in filters (Active or Archived) and can be filtered out as needed.
• Grading scales templates editor was improved: grading is done from the lowest (0) to highest value, fields with values above 100 can be added.

Fixes

• Several issues related to the registration process are fixed.
• Certificates records are correctly shown in reports when units or group reports are selected.
• Grades are now correctly shown for activities in activities report if a grading scale is applied for an objective.
• Grading scales now correctly show minimum and maximum values.
• Archived users can no longer be enrolled in objectives.
• View for compositions without activity names is fixed.
• Course content can now be reviewed correctly if the Show results after option is selected.
• Table of content is no longer shown for one-page compositions.
• If any content is created in a draft composition, it’s no longer accessible to learners.
• Issues with access to open-catalogs are fixed.
• An issue when a new cover image uploaded for a SCORM didn’t change in the course, was fixed.

Known issues

• Sizes of attached files are shown only for newly-uploaded files.
• A new toggle cannot be created within a toggle.
• New members cannot be added to a newly created team without refreshing the screen.
• The date and time selector sometimes does not fit on the screen in Reports.
• When signing out from Avatar, a user is not signed out from LMS.
• External links to cover images cannot be edited.
• Error 401 occurs after an upload of a SCORM package is canceled and the second upload attempt is initiated. The page refresh is necessary to initiate the upload.
• Settings applied for a specific SCORM version are not appropriately distinguished.
• The “Not found” text is displayed when a learner attempts to start a quiz with a due date in the past.
• The Customize Default View setting does not apply to the Collections filter.