Attention eClass Users,

UPDATE: As of 5:00PM Saturday June 24th both eClass and eClassLive have been upgraded and released.

Please be aware that in June 2017, we will be performing a major version upgrade to eClass. This upgrade will introduce a large number of feature improvements across the site and will also include a major upgrade to eClassLive.

The upgrade will require a full system outage, which has been scheduled for Saturday, June 24th 2017 from 12:00AM until Sunday June 25th at 11:59PM (48 hours).

The main system features that will change in the new version of eClass are listed below:

Navigation and Interface

• The eClass course overview page (‘My Home’) has been renamed ‘Dashboard’ throughout the site.
• The name and profile image at the top right of the header now launches a dropdown area containing user’s profiles, their site-wide preferences, their grades, and more.
• The ‘Log out’ button has been moved to the same dropdown mentioned above.
• The profile page has been redesigned with a more efficient categorization of items and new links that aggregate user-specific tools.

Course Content Management

• Activities and Resources that are deleted from the main course page are now placed in a new Recycle bin, available under the Administration block. Deleted items can be restored to your course and will remain in the Recycle bin for 7 days before they are permanently deleted. Note that the recycle bin will not display in existing courses until something has been deleted.
• Editing for course sections/topics/weeks has been improved. Instructors can now delete entire topics and change topic titles from the main course page.
• Header content for sections/topics/weeks is now accessed via the ‘Edit’ menu for each section.
• Users can now download all files within a Folder resource by clicking on the new ‘Download Folder’ button.
• File resource properties and upload/modification date details can now be displayed on the main course page.
  

Grading

• The ‘Categories and Items’ section of the Gradebook has now been renamed to ‘Gradebook setup' and is now accessible from the main course page.
• Instructors can now choose to rescale existing grades in activities when changing the item total.
• Pressing the tab key in any editable cell of the gradebook will now advance the cursor vertically downward to the next cell in the same column.
• Instructors can now set a passing grade for activities within the activity settings (this option was formerly only available in the gradebook). This makes it easier for users to assign passing grades to activities, which can be used as activity completion criteria.
  
• Long gradebook recalculations will now display a progress bar.

Quiz

• Quizzes can now be organized into sections with editable headers.
• In formative quizzes (interactive and immediate feedback question behaviour), questions can now be locked pending completion of the previous question and students can be allowed to re-take questions.
• Quizzes with multiple attempts permitted will now force the inclusion of unseen random questions in subsequent attempts.
  
• The display and formatting of printed quizzes has been improved.
• The available question types will now be ordered by most-used when adding new questions (they were previously listed alphabetically).
• A known issue with CLOZE question answer shuffling has been repaired.

Forum

• When group modes are applied to a forum, instructors now have the option to post a copy of their post to ALL groups rather than manually posting to each separate group.
• Forum posts can now have a preset display period, which allows users to draft forum posts in advance and display them at a later date.
• Instructors can now pin forum topics so that they remain at the top of the forum.
• Users can now click on a ‘Permalink’ within forum posts to generate a static URL to specific posts/replies within a forum.

Assignment

• The assignment grading interface has been overhauled to increase usability, maximize screen width, and provide automatic conversion of MS word files to PDF for online grading.
• Instructors can now duplicate items when creating rubrics.
• A warning will now display when a rubric is missing zero point levels in criteria.
• The formatting in descriptions and frequently used comments on advanced assignment grading (rubrics and marking guides) has been streamlined.
• Assignment grading table column sorting options are now preserved as a user preference.
• Graders can now download selected assignment submissions as a zip file (instead of only all at once).
• A known issue with returning feedback files to all members in group assignments has been fixed.
  

HTML Editor

• Additional styling options for tables are now available within the editor.
• Users can now add hyperlinks in the HTML editor by highlighting text and using the ‘cmd/ctrl K’ keyboard shortcut.
  

Users & Groups

• The Search Box in the ‘Enrol users’ pop-up has been moved to the top of the results table (it was previously available at the bottom of the window).
• The Enrolled Users interface can now be sorted by last access to the course.
• Instructors can now add a user to multiple groups at the same time via the Enrolled Users interface.
• The Enrolled Users interface can now be filtered by students who are not enrolled in a group.
  

Misc. Changes

• eClass Live (Adobe Connect) has been upgraded to include new features and improve performance.
• The Upcoming Events block will now populate with scheduled course events over a 4 month period by default (rather than a 3 week period).
• The Book resource will now properly have a ‘Turn Editing On’ button displayed in the top-right of the screen. It was previously only possible to turn editing on in a Book resource via a link in the Administration block.
• Workshop submissions can now be deleted by instructors (at any time) and by students (at any time when they have edit permissions for their submission.)
• The Lesson activity has received a variety of visual and workflow improvements.
• Report download formats have been expanded and report performance has been streamlined.
• Most activities no longer have mandatory 'Description' fields.

Please note that the upcoming features may be subject to change before the upgrade takes place. We will be providing training and support materials to outline the full list of changes as the upgrade date draws closer.

Also note that while we have booked a 48 hour maintenance window, eClass will be available as soon as the required infrastructure and application changes are complete. We will be sending an additional announcement once access to eClass has been restored.

If you have any questions about this upgrade, please contact us at eclass@ualberta.ca.

Regards,
IST eClass Support