Educators now have an updated in-app notifications feature. This includes:
An updated design, to be in line with the wider EP platform.
A read and unread notification function.
Educators are now informed via notifications when their licence is due to expire in 7 days, and again when it has expired.
The educator and learner account password functionality (not applicable to Single Sign On users) has been updated to be in line with account security best practice. This includes:
Default passwords are no longer first names, nor are they visible anywhere, to anyone.
When an educator adds a new learner account with an email, the learner will be sent an initial email to set a secure password.
When an educator adds a new learner account without an email, educators will be prompted to give out auto-generated temporary passwords (either individually or through a bulk tool).
New educator accounts will receive an email inviting them to set a secure password.
Class exports no longer include a column for passwords.
When an educator or learner account is created by another educator, they don't see the new user's password.
Automated notification emails no longer indicate default passwords.
Learners no longer see a hint about their password being their first name when they enter the incorrect password when logging in.
Learners with a default password can no longer dismiss the Change Password prompt, they must set a new secure password.
The new Generate passwords button can be used after an educator creates multiple new learner accounts. This will assign a temporary password for selected learners and generate a .csv download file.
Changes have been made to available profile settings for learners, to be in line with account security best practice. These include:
Learners no longer have the option to opt out of receiving marketing emails when editing their profile, as they do not receive any marketing emails from EP. This functionality remains for educator accounts.
The email field is now disabled and read-only for learners.
There is no longer a login pop up that asks learners to input an email, if there isn’t one already stored.
The Who’s Online and Student Feedback buttons are now located under a new sub-navigation bar in the Classes tab.
Student Usage has been renamed to Insights.
The educator Student Zone link has been moved to the user dropdown menu in the navigation bar.
Educators can no longer assign work in Tasks or Assessments for classes that are not on an active licence.
Optimised performance of Studio.
Competitions can now be created without any characters A-Z within the title.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where users were not being redirected to the correct dashboard when clicking the link in the You’re in automatic email.
Fixed a bug in Studio where the font in some components differed between the editor and previewing the question.
Fixed two bugs in Smart Lessons where copied slides weren't being named or saved correctly.
February
New features/functions and improvements
Quality of life improvements have been made to password reset and distribution functionality:
Educators can now generate and reset temporary passwords for learners, even if they have an email address associated with their account.
Educators can now multi-select learners and bulk reset passwords.
Temporary passwords and password reset emails now last for 72 hours.
The error message displayed after a temporary password expires now says expired password.
Inactive learners joining a class through class codes are asked to accept EULA and set a new password on first log in.
The personalised report and stories from your school welcome email has been removed.
The text of the back button when viewing a Competition as an educator has been changed to All Competitions.
The cheer button when hovering over a learner’s username in the Get Started page of Assessments has been removed.
Removed Students will be asked a unique set of questions in each attempt text for pre-built assessments when multiple attempts have been chosen.
Competitions are now displayed on the learner dashboard one week before it starts.
Bug Fixes
Fixed bug where educator accounts created through self-service upload weren’t being emailed to activate their accounts.
Fixed multiple bugs in Studio where:
The Long Answer component was resetting after an error.
The colour of the text your cursor is in is now shown in the rich-text toolbar.
The table dropdown for creating new tables now allows for tables bigger than 5x5 (it expands as you move to the edge)
Fixed errors in learner links for subjects which had a space or special character (e.g. EAL/ESOL or Digital Technologies).
Fixed a bug in Assessments where the printing button on the assessment comparison page was broken.
Fixed some icons in Assessments that weren’t displaying correctly.
Fixed issues with loading spinners on the Student App.
March
New features/functions and improvements
Added Shareable Lesson Links to the Content Library. Lesson links that are copied and shared can be accessed by other users regardless of the school they belong to.
When selected into a custom colour, educators can now click Add saved colour which will pre-fill this colour for them to save.
In Studio, the colour hex code now shows when you hover over colours of the colour picker.
Stopped Embed components from turning an Information Slide into a Question Slide.
Set a default size for non-embed URLs in the iFrame component.
Multiple updates to the Working Formula component, which include:
Changed arrows to use the more standard \rightarrow and \leftarrow LaTeX.
Added \lim (limits) to the calculus toolbar.
Added \equiv (triple equals) to the chemistry toolbar.
Added a list of currency symbols to the classic toolbar.
Fixed what is inserted for absolute values, using normal LaTeX.
Tooltips for shortcuts are now consistent.
Educators can view inactive educator and learner accounts in the Classes tab but are not able to click into them.
Further quality of life improvements made to password reset and distribution functionality:
Added in the ability to view and copy username and temporary password when creating a new learner in a school. Revised copy and confirmation dialogue to more accurately represent user actions.
Temporary passwords are now two-word passwords (4-5 characters per word) that are suitable from primary and above in an effort to increase usability.
CSV files of temporary passwords will no longer contain leading whitespaces before the password starts.
Every Reset Password dialog now displays the account’s username as well as password whenever they display the password for a single account.
The correct error messages and option to download a .CSV file will now show in the generate password button in the Classes tab.
Added a new in-app notification to let educators know that an official EP competition is starting soon (6 days before the competition starts).
The dashboard now reloads when you switch schools as an educator with an account in multiple schools.
Bug Fixes
Fixed multiple bugs in Studio where:
The CTRL + S shortcut for saving slides didn’t work if the text component of the Content Editor was selected.
Slides couldn’t be dragged to the bottom of the section/group.
Slides couldn’t be dragged into empty sections.
Users couldn't import specific translations into a Smart Lesson.
Importing specific translations from another list would cause the original list to look like it had lost those translations.
Fixed two bugs in the Content Library where:
Learner links to folders where the folder name has non-alphanumeric characters were broken.
All folders closed after dragging things around.
Fixed a bug in Competitions where 1 month was being added to dates if the user is located in a negative time zone.
Fixed a bug with invalid sessions after leaving the dashboard unattended for some time.
Fixed the formatting of our EULA page on mobile.
April
New features/functions and Improvements
Adobe Flash is no longer supported.
Folder and activity icons have been updated across the platform to fresh new designs.
We now support the last 2 major versions of any major browser (except for Internet Explorer 11).
Educators at Level 5 Guru certification level now have an unlimited supply of all stickers (including the special ones).
In Classes, when an educator adds a new learner without an email they will be given their temporary password.
For Tasks containing Smart Lessons, the default learning mode is now Revision Mode instead of Learning Mode, and so by default, learners will need to start lessons from scratch.
When setting a Task with only one Smart Lesson, we now show a targeted remediation section. This allows educators to control if a remediation task is assigned or not.
We now have consistent casing for the colour hex codes in Studio.
Long LaTeX lines now wrap in Studio.
In Studio, the Uploader Component has a new Google Drive Uploader that allows learners to upload files directly from their Google Drive. Users will be prompted to log in to Google if not already.
Accuracy of competition statistics on the Global Scoreboard page has been improved.
Bug Fixes
Fixed two bugs in Assessments where:
Educators couldn’t see learners' grades on the marking page if the assessment results were set to internal or provisional.
The student detail section of the Analysis tab would display incorrectly.
Fixed a bug in Studio where the symbols drop down was not showing if an equation was located within a table.
Fixed a bug that was causing the Send Cheer button to be greyed out when trying to send Cheers to all online learners.
May
New features/functions and Improvements
Added the ability to log in to EP using Google. The new sign-in option allows users to sign in using their Google credentials if the email associated with their EP account is a Google email address.
Learner accounts can now store multiple parent emails (previously this was limited to one).
Made the following subject areas available in the Content Library:
Humanities
Papiamento
In the Classes tab, educators are now able to see if temporary passwords have expired.
When doing a bulk reset of passwords, educators now have two export options: a spreadsheet of passwords; or a new print-friendly format.
Lessons shared via a Content Sharing link can now be previewed on mobile devices.
When an educator reaches Level 5 Guru status, the notification image now shows that they have infinite stickers.
In Browse Mode of the Content Library, the search bar is now permanently in-line with the top bar. Previously the search bar would appear beside the modules, and would shift to the top-bar if the window was below a certain width.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug in Studio where importing questions while editing Exam type content would display a loading spinner rather than displaying the first question.
Fixed a bug in Assessments where the teacher and class filters were not working properly in the marking section.
Fixed a bug where the platform would crash when a learner that hadn’t accepted the EULA logged in.
Fixed a bug where opening a new tab via the EP logo in the navigation bar wasn’t working.
June
New features/functions and Improvements
The new iOS Teacher Mobile App has been released.
Added new Student Avatar options in the Student Zone.
Moved to a new authentication server for Single Sign On, making logging in through SSO more secure.
Bug Fixes
Fixed multiple bugs in Assessments where:
Assessments would crash if they contained too many layers of nested folders.
Learner lesson recommendations were not being updated after their marks were manually updated by an educator.
Users were prevented from viewing the Analysis tab when using Safari 13.1.
Fixed a broken scrolling bug across the platform.
Fixed a bug in Competitions that prevented editing competition information on an iPad while using Safari.
Fixed a bug when transferring accounts where educator profile pages still displayed their original school. This page now updates correctly.
July
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug on the iOS Teacher Mobile App where logging in via Single Sign On was not working for some users.
Fixed a bug in Assessments where the live feed was showing that learners had submitted their attempt immediately after an assessment was reopened for them.
Fixed a bug in Classes where some educators would see an error page when navigating between tabs.
Fixed two bugs on the Student App where:
Working Formula question input fields were not working as expected.
The calculator in a Smart Lesson would input a number twice instead of once.
August
New features/functions and Improvements
Improved the school search function when logging in through the Single Sign On portal. Schools are now ordered by the most relevant keyword, instead of alphabetically.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where assessments embedded in Canvas were not working for some learners.
Fixed two bugs in Tasks where:
A duplicate scrollbar was appearing in Details that was affecting the ability to scroll.
Variables for a question weren’t always stored with a learner’s answer, and when an educator would view their answer, it would show a different variable and be marked incorrectly despite the learner answering it correctly.
Fixed two bugs in the Student Zone where:
Users were stopped from sending Cheers in the main competition scoreboard.
Learner made lists were affected by a progress discrepancy issue.
Fixed a bug in Dash where Fact Lists would show the prompt Write the English as the answer instead of Write the answer below.
September
New features/functions and improvements
Automated enrolment complete emails have been modified for schools using Single Sign On. These now exclude details about passwords, as they are not required for SSO.
iOS Teacher Mobile App:
Updated the alerts system so important information is displayed more clearly.
The sign in screen has been redesigned and rebuilt to preventatively fix potential bugs.
Various improvements to accessibility were made, such as adaptive font size on the sign in screen to respect the user’s iOS settings for font size.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug in the iOS Teacher Mobile App via an app update that was preventing some Single Sign On users from being able to log in.
Fixed a bug in the Student Zone that stopped users from being able to enter Peer Review mode.
Fixed a bug in the Student Zone where learners were able to send Cheers in a task that had Cheers disabled.
October
New features/functions and improvements
Replaced the existing Content Search function with a brand new version that now includes curriculum, author and content type filters as well as other quality of life improvements.
Released Version 2.0.0 of the iOS Teacher Mobile App which added the following:
A redesigned classes screen where the bottom navigation bar was removed in favour of buttons in the header.
A redesigned Tasks overview screen, now providing more visibility of task settings including the ability to delete tasks from within the app.
Redesigned and added icons to the new Task type picker.
Improved loading and performance within the app.
Speaking questions have now been filtered out of Dash for Smart Lessons/Lists that include them and lessons with only speaking questions will no longer have Dash available.
Bug Fixes
Fixed two bugs in Assessments where:
Users would get stuck on the loading screen when they refreshed their page at the end of an assessment.
An answer for a Working Formula question would be saved against a different Working Formula question.
Fixed two bugs in the Content Library where:
On iPads, the new Content Search box would move to be on top of the Browse/Edit toggle.
The visibility (private vs public) of shared content wasn’t being updated properly when visibility settings were changed.
November
New features/functions and improvements
Removed the automatic email sent to learners when their Translation List suggestion (via the I was right button) was accepted.
Automated emails about login details changing will now contain usernames (i.e. password reset emails).
Educators can now download the following certificates at any time without needing to contact EP:
Downloaded from the Teacher Profile page:
Teacher Certification certificates
Downloaded in the Competitions tab, under the results page of the specific event:
World Series Competition certificates.
Official Competition certificates.
Partnership Competition certificates.
Added a banner on the iOS Teacher Mobile App that appears prompting the user to update the app if they are running an outdated version.
Bug Fixes
Fixed three bugs in Classes where:
Archived classes could not be unarchived.
The Find in class search function wouldn’t return any results.
The Get print-friendly passwords function was prevented from working.
Fixed two bugs in Assessments where:
The Monitor Other Assessments function wouldn’t show all learners for assessments assigned to a mix of full classes and individual students.
The Live Feed wouldn’t update correctly if learners exited the Student App on Chromebook and Android tablets.
Fixed several bugs within the Content Library and Studio where:
The Student Link function was redirecting learners to the homepage rather than the lesson the link belonged to.
Slides with Audio Components were not being recognised as markable questions when used in Exam type content.
Importing questions from multiple lessons into an Exam would set the Analysis Tags to be from the last folder selected, instead of being associated with the correct lesson each question was pulled from.
The variable ```\$\var{name}`` was causing the slide to be deleted after saving the slide it was included in.
Fixed a bug in the Student Zone where the lesson links within Recommended Activities (Targeted Remediation activities) wouldn’t redirect to the lesson.
Fixed a bug on the iOS Teacher Mobile App that was preventing users without a job title from logging in.
Fixed a bug where PDF Export email links were directing some users to the incorrect page.
December
New features/functions and improvements
The option for learners to leave free text feedback after completing a lesson has been removed from the platform. To learn more about this change, see this article.
Added integration with Wonde. To learn more about this change, see this article.
For Long Answer questions with the input language set to Japanese or Chinese, the option to count by characters (not including whitespace) instead of just words for answer expectations has been added.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug in Assessments that displayed a Not Attempted tag on questions that had a complete student answer when using the print function (also affected PDF generation).
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