Today we rolled out some new preferences for teachers. They are all course-related. That is, these settings exist for an individual course only. You may find them by going to your Control Panel and clicking on “Course Options” next to that course.
Let student see future assignments
This setting controls whether students may or may not see assignments that have a “date assigned” that is in the future. Some teachers might find it more useful to hide upcoming assignments to prevent confusion and to better guide students’ learning, but others might like to reveal where the course is headed. It’s all up to you.
New Assignment Preferences
This section include two preferences that let you control some default values for the creation of new assignments: the default assignment type, and whether or not students can ask questions about that assignment. The default values that you specify on this screen will be automatically be filled in when you go to create new assignments in this course. You can always change them, of course; this will merely save you some clicking time if, for example, most of your assignments are Homework, or you always want to enable student questions.
1 year ago
Today’s fun new feature was actually a student request! Before, it was really annoying to log in to essign as a student or a teacher, because you would automatically be logged out as soon as your Web browser closed. Now there is a “Remember me” check box that will keep you logged in for up to thirty days. Of course, you can still log out at any time.
Teachers should be wary when using this feature, especially on computers that are in public places, such as a classroom. Always make sure you log out when you’re done!
We also just created a Twitter feed for all the lattest news and thoughts from the great minds behind essign. Be sure to check it out at:
http://twitter.com/essign
1 year ago
Today we are introducing a feature that we have been wanting to add for a long time. essign used to be a one-way communication tool: teachers post homework, students check homework. This isn’t the way education is supposed to work! To learn is to have a conversation and to share ideas.
That’s why today, students may now ask questions about their assignments. Assignments with this feature enabled are tagged with the number of questions posted about that assignment, e.g. “3 Q”. Questions may be submitted to any assignment with a similar designation.
The question does not appear right away, however; it is sent directly to the teacher for review. Once it is approved and answered, the question and answer will appear together right beneath the assignment.
Sweet!
1 year ago
Teachers might have noticed that there is now a link to this blog in the control panel. It lists the most recent blog post and its date so teachers can be informed of changes as they happen. Do you have a question about a new feature? Check the blog first!
But that’s not all! Because of the block scheduling system at Nauset High School, some of the teachers present the same course material across multiple days. Different courses mean different due dates; what’s a teacher to do?! We’ve streamlined the “duplicate assignment” feature so teachers have more control over the duplication process.
1 year ago
A big advantage of having your homework posted online is that it is easy to access all kinds of related resources, such as bulletins and file attachments. However, we left out a big one, the very foundation of the Web: links. Now teachers can add related links so students can read additional online resources. Students can find these links on the right-hand side of the course pages, right below bulletins and attachments.
Another requested teacher feature (hey, that rhymes) also implemented is the ability to specify an “end date” for bulletins. This way, the bulletin will automatically hide once that day has passed. If you would prefer the bulletin to exist indefinitely, then just leave that field blank when you are writing the bulletin.
Finally, the Teacher Control Panel has been revamped. The old one was getting really cramped with the addition of the links feature. I think teachers will find the new layout uses space more appropriately.
1 year ago
I know that you did!
Here’s a tip for skimming the blog: important stuff is highlighted.
1 year ago
It’s been that way since the Web was born: links were designed to have underlines. It doesn’t matter how fancy the text becomes when you roll your mouse cursor over it; if it isn’t underlined to begin with, you won’t want to click it. That’s why you will find that all links are now appropriately underlined. Click away!
You might also notice that the layout of the main “welcome” page has been tweaked. The important stuff is big, and the content text, which you will probably only need to read once, is down and out of the way.
I do it because you people are the best.
1 year ago
With little fanfare, I’d like to present the premiere of the essign Web application development blog.
Now, on to the important stuff.
Bug Fixes
So, apparently the Feedback and Support e-mail forms were themselves throwing error messages. I believe this is the very definition of irony. Whatever the case, it is fixed now.
User-Interface Improvements
Most of the changes made today are small user interface tweaks. For example, some teachers expressed concern that it was tough to find things on the site because there was not very much contrast, and this is tough on “old eyes.” You will find that links are now a little brighter. They no longer have an underline, however, to compensate for the increased link visibility.
Additionally, the links in the page footer have been consolidated into several, user-specific “chunks.” This seems to be a general trend on Web sites nowadays; people love to fill up the page footer with search-engine-friendly links. In this case, it just makes it easier to add more links in the future. It also looks neater.
1 year ago
