What's New for Faculty

February 2025

Question Generator for online assessments

Platform Managers can now enable the question generator for teachers to utilize when building questions for their online assessments. Teachers enter a topic, number of questions to generate, question type, and details to determine question difficulty. The question generator then uses generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI) to create questions that teachers can add to their question banks and assessments.

Note: This AI does not index or crawl any existing question information and information entered in the generator is not used for training the AI.

Teachers have full control over which generated questions are added to their question banks and assessments and they can edit those questions as needed.

The question generator does not replace the question building process and is intended to be used as a starting point in building assessment questions. The tool may provide incorrect information and teachers need to review generated questions for accuracy and appropriateness.

Tips for generating questions:

  • Topics may be broad, but more specific topics tend to generate more usable questions.

  • Learning levels are based on Bloom's Taxonomy and increase in complexity and difficulty as you go down the list of available options. In theory:

    • Remembering, Understanding, and Applying are better suited to Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blank, and True/False questions.

    • Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating tend to be a better fit for Essay questions.

  • The difficulty of the generated questions is determined by a combination of the Grade level, Learning level, and Question difficulty selected.

 

Bulk comment entry in new faculty report card grade entry experience

In the new faculty report card grade entry experience, faculty can now enter bulk comments for their students across multiple class sections.

  1. In Faculty:

    Select Classes, choose your class, then select New Grading.

    OR

    Select My Day, then Schedule & Performance and choose a Standard grade plan under Grading on the right side of the page.

  2. Ensure grid view is selected in the upper right.

  3. Under the appropriate Grade plan grade, select Add bulk comment.

  4. Select the students the comment applies to, expanding additional class sections and selecting additional students as needed.

  5. Enter the comment and select Save.

    Note: Note: When adding bulk comments, a comment icon displays next to a student's name if they have an existing comment for the grade plan. If you apply a bulk comment to a student with an existing comment, the bulk comment will overwrite the existing comment.

 

Preferences in Gradebook

Teachers can now access their assignment creation default settings from gradebooks. Previously, these settings were only available through the Assignment Center or class Assignments pages.

To access the assignment creation defaults from a gradebook, select More, then Preferences.

Assignment Creation default settings

From here, you can access the full Preferences menu, which includes assignment import settings and assignment list view defaults, by selecting Tab list.

January 2025

Calculating grades in new faculty report card grade entry experience

When calculating grades in the new faculty report card grade entry experience, the Formula is now automatically selected when only one admin-defined formula is available for selection.

 

Skill selection in new faculty report card grade entry experience

When using the bulk editor to enter skill grades or comments in the new faculty report card grade entry experience, entering a skill grade or comment now automatically selects the skill checkbox. If the skill checkbox is cleared, any grade or comment entered for the skill is not retained upon saving.

 

Assignments and Assignment types in Student Gradebook

The student gradebook now displays all assignment types enabled in the class gradebook. Published assignments with a due date and time in the past are also visible, even if they are not yet graded. Previously, an assignment type was only visible once a graded assignment existed for the type and assignments only displayed once graded or with a “marked as” designation.

 

New faculty report card grade entry

The new report card grade entry experience for faculty will be enabled for all schools on January 7th. Faculty will only have access to the old report card grade entry experience through Grading on class pages. The new experience will be available from the New Grading tab on class pages, as well as through My Day, Schedule & Performance, by selecting a grade plan on the Grading tile.

We’ve highlighted the new faculty standard grade entry and skill entry experiences in two videos:

Standard grade entry

Assessment and Mastery skill entry

 

Reports in new grade entry experience

The Reports menu is now visible in the new report card grade entry page even if there are no open grade plans.

 

Grade review in new grade entry experience

When grade review is enabled, the review options are now visible outside of the review dates in the new report card grade entry experience.