For the product updates of 2019, see Product Updates 2019.
Major updates
Improvements to starting a test
It used to be the case that you manually needed to reload the start screen of a test to see whether a closed test was opened. But not anymore!
Half an hour before the test opens a countdown will appear which automatically opens the test on the correct time. Don't worry, it will not start the test automatically, you are still in control!
More information on starting a test can be found in this article.
Exporting test answers
You can now export the student answers in their test attempts of all your tests in a course or only for a specific test. Now you have full insight in all data from the tests to use in processing (summative) test results.
NOTE: This option is only available for organisation admins or for a teacher if enabled in your organisation. Can't you see the export options as teacher? Reach out to your organisation admin or ask Grasple support.
Distributing points over subquestions
When using multiple subquestions you want to be able indicate how much each subquestion weights relative to the other. This update allows you to do this by changing the weight per subquestion!
In the edit mode of each exercise you can now change the default weights to alter the relative weight of each subquestion to your liking.
These weights are used in both subjects and tests. Carefully read the following articles for more detail on how to use this new option:
Display maximum and received points per subquestion in tests
With the new option of assigning points per question in tests (see update below) and distributing these points over subquestions (see update above), you might want to:
show the maximum points per subquestion to students during their test
and (optionally) show the points they received when they are allowed to review the question after submission
You can do this now, with the two new settings for tests:
Display max points per question
Show received and max points when allowing students to review questions
By default, both the new settings are switched OFF. Below you see an example on how to switch them on.
This update changed the layout of the "Student review settings (after submit)" to facilitate the new option of showing the received and maximum number of points.
Assign points per question (pool) in tests
You now have the option to assign different number of points per question (or question pool) in tests. This gives you as teacher more control on how each question weights in the final score of your test.
Start using it by going to the edit view of your test and assigning points per question or question pool.
New Parameter Operators
New operators have been added for creating parameterised questions. The operators added are:
Round: round a value to a specified number of decimals using several methods.
Max: get the maximum value from a list or set
Min: get the minimum value from a list or set
Mean: calculate the mean value of a list or set
Median: get the median value from a list or set
Mode: get the mode from a list or set
Standard Deviation: calculate the standard deviation of a list or set
Variance: calculate the variance of a list or set
They are now available in the type dropdown when creating parameters.
NOTE: the round option in the formula operators will be removed and will be migrated automatically to the new round operator if you used it in one of your parameters.
A copy feature for slides
After the success of the copy function of tests we extended the copy functionality to also include making a copy of a slide. As of now, you can make a copy of a slide within the same subject, but also copy a slide to a different subject. Inline with the other editor functions the copy button is availble within the actions menu of a slide:
More information about this feature can be found in this article.
A copy feature for tests
It was already possible to copy a challenge or a complete lesson to easily make variations of existing content. To also make it easier to make variations in tests we made it possible to copy an existing test. By clicking the new 'copy' button in the edit screen of a test a new version of the test will be created for you in the chosen repository.
This copy will be configured with the same options set as the original test, and all challenges linked to the original test are linked to the new copy as well.
Extended access rights for organisation administrators to courses
As an extension to the previous update we extended the access rights for organisation admins once more. As of now, organisation admins can use this admin panel to navigate to all courses within their organisation and edit the content, see test results, modify student access and manage the teaching team.
More details about this admin panel and the list of courses can be found in this article.
Extended access rights for organisation administrators to repositories
The organisation administrators already had access to an admin panel which gave information about the repositories within their organisation. As of now, organisation admins can use this admin panel to navigate to all these repositories and edit the content or modify the users within those repositories.
In addition, organisation admins are now able to make a repository available for all teachers in their organisation:
More details about this admin panel and the list of repositories can be found in this article.
Live test dashboard
Do you want to know who is currently taking one of your tests? The live dashboard shows you all relevant information about your students.
If you scheduled a test between a limited time period you want to know who is doing the test, who has completed the test and how long students still have to finish their current attempt. In the live-dashboard of the test results view you can find this information.
Read more about the live test dashboard in this article.
Support for sets and intervals
Do you want to let your students practice with sets and intervals? This is now possible within Grasple! As you would expect the CAS system behind the platform can also compare sets in a robust way, this ensures that the following expressions are all considered to be equal:
Read more about what we support in this article.
Extra time for students in tests
Do you want to administer a test and give some students a bit more time to complete? This is now possible by granting some groups of students extra time:
Read more about how this works and how you can edit these settings in this article.
Question pools in tests
Do you want to vary the questions each student receives during a test in a controlled way? Question pools gives you an extra tool for this.
To prevent students from working together on the questions in a test, you can randomly select questions from specific collections of questions (i.e question pools), resulting in a unique test per students, while maintaining the same difficulty (and covered topics).
You can combine this with question parameterisation and random order selection to further vary the test per student.
Hide score and question feedback in test results
Want to hide the question feedback and score for students after they finished the test? With this update you can! You can choose to show/hide the score and question feedback separately giving you the flexibility to only show to students what you want them to see after completing the test.
Combine this with the other available settings such as duration, opening and closing time and maximum number attempts to configure your tests for your specific purpose.
Read more about how to control the feedback students can see when reviewing their test results here.
Export functionality for courses
Organisation admins can now export datasets of the courses in their organisation. In addition it is now possible for organisations to allow the export of datasets for teachers. This feature enables teachers to export structural information about their course, as well as progress data related to the activity of registered students.
When enabled teachers can access the dedicated export page via a link in their dashboard:
Please let us know if you want this feature to be enabled for your organisation.
New options to position and size your images
You now have more control on how to position and size your images within your content. Sizing and positioning are now decoupled with both of them having three options to choose from.
For size you can choose 33%, 66% or 100% of the content size.
For positioning you choose center align (with text above and below), float left or float right (with text wrapped around).
Keyboard short-cut for math-boxes
Creating content in Grasple without a mouse is made easier by the addition of a keyboard short-cut for adding math-boxes. The key combination ctrl+shift+e or command+shift+e now creates a math-box for you in which you can immediately start typing Latex:
Naturally, if you already selected some text the keyboard short-cut will use that text as the starting content of the math-box.
Dataset support
It is now possible create parameterised questions based on datasets. We have added the ability to upload a dataset and sample a number of rows. The resulting dataset can be downloaded by students to work with.
Additionally, you can perform two operations on columns selected from the dataset:
Correlation
Linear Regression
Similar to the output of other operations the output of these new operations can be used in the question and in the definition of the (in)correct answers to a question.
Additional operators and check methods
Do you want to provide even more specific feedback in your exercises? With this update you are given more options to check the answer of a student, or perform more operations on any parameter. The following parameters are added:
Select: Extract a value from a list / matrix
Unique: Return all unique values of the input list
Length: Return the length of the input list
EigenValues: Calculate the Eigenvalues of a matrix
EigenVectors: Calculate the Eigenvectors of a matrix
Shape: Calculates the shape of a matrix
Diagonalize: Calculates the P and D matrices of an input matrix
In addition, we added a total several new check-methods:
is Diagonal Matrix: to evaluate whether a matrix is a 'Diagonal Matrix'.
Read more about this check-method here.is Defined: to evaluate whether a parameter has a value.
Read more about this check-method here.Compared to: four methods to evaluate whether a parameter is Greater Than, Less Than, Greater Than or Equal, or Less Than or Equal than a given value.
Read more about these check-methods here.
Organisation Admin Panel
Want to know which courses are live across your organisation? Or want to see all the repositories and teachers in your organisation? You can now using the admin panel.
NOTE: this functionality is only available for organisation admins
As functional manager of Grasple within your university or organisation you want to have an overview of how Grasple is being used. The admin panel is the perfect place for you get a broad oversight of Grasple's usage in your organisation.
The admin panel gives you an overview of:
Courses including their status and number of students currently enrolled
Repositories including the number of items and users
Teachers including their courses and repositories
Parameterised line-graphs including student's answer
Do you want to use 2D line chart in your exercise based on parameters or a student's answer? This new feature allows you to easily create graphs based on (parameterised) functions and/or the student's answer.
With this new feature you can achieve the following:
add charts to your exercise by simply typing math
create a parameterised charts by using parameterised functions
use the student's answer in charts to generate specific feedback based on the student's specific answer
add these charts in the description, question or feedback of an exercise
Adjust Marking of Student Answers in Tests
A student comes to you with the remark that a given answer to a question in one of your tests should have been marked correct instead of incorrect. As a teacher, you can now change the marking of student's answers in the tests which you've published in your course.
Within a single answer rule you can now add multiple clauses. Multiple clauses can be used to check multiple characteristics of the student's answer to determine whether to provide specific feedback (or mark the answer correct/incorrect).
Clauses are evaluated one by one and only if ALL of them evaluate to true, the statement evaluates to true and thus the specific feedback is given to the student.
Below you can see an simple illustrative example of an answer rule with multiple clauses within the statement.
Minor updates
Export of template parameters values is now available in the edit view of each exercise. It will export the values in LateX code. See for more detail this article on exports.
Manual test will now als be copied (linked via reference) to your new course when copying from another course. See the updated explanation in this article.
As teacher you can now start a test in preview mode even if the test is not open yet or you already did the maximum number of attempts. You can only do this in preview mode, not when you open the test in your course.
When adding students to your course you can now also provide student ids if your organisation allows this. Read more about adding students to your course here.
The select operator does now accept a range definition of the form "range_start:range_end" including negative "range_end" values (e.g. "2:3" or "1:-1")
The performance of previewing an exercise with multiple sub-exercises is improved.
Multiplying an equation by a constant on both sides is now seen as algebraically equivalent. (e.g. "y=x+1" is algebraically equivalent to "2y=2x+2")
You can easily change the order of answer rules in editor by drag and drop. This helps teachers to change the order in which answer rules are evaluated for specific feedback.
LTI Integration with Brightspace can (optionally) transfer the Student ID to Grasple to be displayed in tests result exports for teachers
You can now navigate to the repositories page via the black topbar
The 'conditions' button for undefined placeholders is now disabled (instead of simply not working when placeholders are not defined).
In the exercises overview of any lesson within the repository, the names of exercises are now displayed.
The order of challenges is now stored correctly when changing to the 'fixed order' method while editing a lesson.
In the exercises overview of any lesson within the repository we now display if the challenge is linked from a different repository or not.
The order of (parameterised) multiple choice answers are shuffled when taking a test. Inline with the practice mode the answers are always shown in the same order in the review mode.
When taking a test a modal is displayed if you navigate away from the page without saving your answers. To indicate which answers are changed all changed answers are marked in yellow.
When editing the answers of an already answered question in a test you will not automatically navigate to the next question if you save an answer anymore.
It is now possible to change the order of sub-questions when editing a challenge. For now this is only possible for challenges that do not use logic to navigate between sub-questions.
We made improvements to the way you can create a PDF version of challenges! Menus are now hidden when printing a page.
You can now copy all texts from Dutch to English on text slides.
Copying a challenge is now more informative, a modal is shown while the backend is busy for you