In these release notes
assessmentQ 2.9 contains the following new features and improvements:
- On the fly assignments
- New item options:
- New supporting tool: Inline word explanation
- Model answer for the Canvas item
- Metadata with limited access
- Additional options in Scenarios
- Optimisation of the scientific calculator
- Optimisation for SSO with external ID
- Other improvements
- End-of-life Edumatic items
On the fly assignments
A brand new feature in assessmentQ 2.9 is the possibility to create on the fly assignments.
An on the fly assignment is an assignment (exercise or exam) that selects a number of items from a larger pool of items. This selection is done “on the fly” in the assessmentQ player, so immediately when a participant starts a session.
For example, the first part Present tenses of the on the fly assignment below contains a pool of 40 items of which 10 items will be presented to the candidate.
Use cases for on the fly assignments include:
- In the case of practice assignments, the participant can take the same assignment several times and get different questions each time (provided the pool of items is sufficiently large).
- In the case of exams, cheating becomes harder for participants as each participant has a different selection of questions in the same exam.
Item versioning
Starting from assessmentQ 2.9, item versioning is introduced in the assessmentQ item bank.
Changes to the name, content, properties (including metadata and time limits) of an item will automatically lead to a new version.
As an author, you can consult the version overview, preview a version of your choice and restore a previous version.
Item comments
As an author, you can now add comments to an item.
This allows multiple authors to collaborate in the item creation process as they can view, reply to and resolve each other's comments.
Note: As an author, you can edit and delete your own comments. The Edit and Delete options are not available for comments that have been added by other authors.
Item history
As of version 2.9, authors can consult the item history. This shows the complete history of an item:
- Who created and modified the item?
- When were new versions saved?
- Who restored a version and when?
- Who changed the item status?
- Which comments were added, replied to, deleted, and resolved?
This way, the entire item development process is traceable. The item history can be exported to Excel for further processing and analysis.
Inline word explanation
As an author, you can provide inline explanations for words or phrases in your item instruction for participants to better understand the question.
The participants will see dotted underlining when a word or phrase contains an inline explanation. When clicking the underlined text, they will see the explanation in a pop-up.
Note: There is no template setting for showing glossary terms. If word explanations have been added to an item, they are always shown in the player.
Model answer for Canvas item
Starting from assessmentQ 2.9, the author can add a model answer to a Canvas item, either by:
- uploading a PDF, or
- drawing/writing the model answer on the canvas
The participants will see the model answer when opening the Solution in an exercise.
Graders can easily compare the participant’s answer to the model answer, and give a more objective score.
Metadata with limited access
Metadata with limited access can only be used by authors who have the permission to use them, whereas they remain read-only for other authors:
- A new option is added to metadata keys: Limited access.
- A new permission Manage metadata with limited access has been added:
In the item bank, only authors with this permission can add and change metadata keys with limited access. For authors without this permission the metadata keys with limited access are read-only.
Additional options in Scenarios
The module Scenarios, which was introduced in assessmentQ 2.8, has been further completed in assessmentQ 2.9. The following actions are now also available:
- Duplicating a scenario
- Re-arranging parts and blocks in a scenario
- Permanently deleting a scenario from the recycle bin
Optimisation of the scientific calculator
In assessmentQ 2.9, the following improvements are available in the scientific calculator:
- The input field is cleared when the user:
- enters values again after an error was shown.
- navigates to another item for which the scientific calculator is activated.
- The calculator no longer returns complex numbers.
- 0 to the power of 0 returns an error.
- The precision has been improved.
- Names of mathematical functions (sin, cos, tan, log, ln, …) are no longer displayed cursively.
- Very big results (e.g. 1000!) return an error instead of infinity.
- Results are no longer displayed with E+ provided they can be displayed entirely on the display. This optimisation is also done in the standard calculator.
Optimisation for SSO with external ID
To optimize the SSO integration with external ID, the external ID has been added as unique identifier in assessmentQ.
This impacts the user management in assessmentQ in the following way:
- When an administrator manually creates a new user with an external ID that already exists in assessmentQ, a warning will be shown.
- When an administrator imports users with external IDs that already exist in assessmentQ, they will be displayed under "Updated users". The external IDs are preserved. Other user details are adjusted as necessary.
- When a user is created via API, an error will be returned if the external ID already exists in assessmentQ.
New icons for assignments
New icons are introduced for exams and exercises:
: Exercise. Participants can start an exercise multiple times.
: Exam. Participants can take an exam only once.
Item path in the search result
When you search for an item in the item bank, you can now also see the item path in the search results.
Item ID and version in an assignment
About an item in assessmentQ:
- Each item in the item bank has a unique ID.
- An item in the item bank can have different versions, but the item ID doesn't change.
- When an item is added to an assignment, the actual version of the item is copied into the assignment and the item gets another ID in the assignment.
Starting from assessmentQ 2.9, the item details in an assignment show:
- the two IDs of the item, i.e. the original item ID and the assignment item ID
- the item version that has been added to the assignment.
Note: Item versioning is introduced in assessmentQ 2.9. As a result, for items that were added before this release, no version information will be displayed.
Status change in Grading
In the Grading module, the status of an assignment used to change to Grading in progress as soon as the grader opened the detail of an answer. Starting from assessmentQ 2.9, the status will only change when the grader actually changes a score.
End-of-life Edumatic items
In August 2023, the following 4 Edumatic items will become end-of-life:
- Dialog
- Dictation
- Divide sentence
- Situational judgement
In anticipation of the end-of-life of these exercise types, it is recommended that authors remove these item types from their assignments.
In order for them to easily find the assignments that still use these item types, an additional filter has been added in the module Assignments:
For more information about the impact of the end-of-life of these item types, see Update on Edumatic item types.